Johnson, Samuel. The Letters of Samuel Johnson. Redford, BruceEditor , Princeton University Press, 1994.
4: 198
Samuel Johnson
-
Standard Name: Johnson, Samuel
Used Form: Dr Johnson
Arriving in eighteenth-century London as one more young literary hopeful from the provinces, SJ
achieved such a name for himself as an arbiter of poetry, of morality (through his Rambler and other periodical essays and his prose fiction Rasselas), of the language (the Dictionary), and of the literary canon (his edition of Shakespeare
and the Lives of the English Poets) that literary history has often typecast him as hidebound and authoritarian. This idea has been facilitated by his ill-mannered conversational dominance in his late years and by the portrait of him drawn by the hero-worshipping Boswell
. In fact he was remarkable for his era in seeing literature as a career open to the talented without regard to gender. From his early-established friendships with Elizabeth Carter
and Charlotte Lennox
to his mentorship of Hester Thrale
, Frances Burney
, and (albeit less concentratedly) of Mary Wollstonecraft
and Henrietta Battier
, it was seldom that he crossed the path of a woman writer without friendly and relatively egalitarian encouragement.
Connections
| Connections Sort descending | Author name | Excerpt |
|---|---|---|
| death | Anna Williams | AW
died at 8 Bolt Court near Fleet Street in London of mere inanition, Johnson, Samuel. The Letters of Samuel Johnson. Redford, BruceEditor , Princeton University Press, 1994. 4: 187 Larsen, Lyle. Dr. Johnson’s Household. Archon Books, 1985. 98-9 |
| death | Thomas Otway | Samuel Johnson
professed unwillingness to believe the story to which he gave currency, that Otway was reduced to begging for food, and choked to death on a roll bought with a charitable gift. Johnson, Samuel. Lives of the English Poets. Hill, George BirkbeckEditor , Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1905. 1: 247 |
| Dedications | Charlotte Lennox | The full title was Memoirs for the History of Madame de Maintenon and of the last age; Lennox published it as the author of The Female Quixote. The price was fifteen shillings; the... |
| Dedications | Charlotte Lennox | The final volume came out on 22 February 1754. Isles, Duncan. “The Lennox Collection”. Harvard Library Bulletin, No. 4, pp. 317 - 44. 326 |
| Dedications | Charlotte Lennox | A second edition followed on 19 March 1761. It featured the first appearance of Lennox's name on a title-page, and a dedication (supplied by Johnson
; the first edition had none) to the Duchess of Newcastle |
| Education | Evelyn Sharp | ES
received her first education at home, from her sisters Ethel, Bertha, and Mabel (the eldest), who taught the younger ones Bible stories on Sundays. At the same time she imbibed from her brothers the... |
| Education | Harriette Wilson | While she was still in her teens, although engaged in her second paid sexual relationship, her lover Frederic Lamb
set out to get her reading Milton
, Shakespeare
, Byron
, theRambler, Virgil |
| Education | Mary Somerville | Flipping casually through a ladies' fashion magazine when she was about fourteen years old, Mary had her curiosity caught by an algebraic expression in a puzzle. She was told that the variables were Algebra... |
| Education | Lydia Maria Child | At fifteen she read Paradise Lost (with her brother's encouragement) and was delighted with its grandeur and sublimity, but was bold enough to criticise Milton
for assert[ing] the superiority of his own sex in rather... |
| Education | Sarah Josepha Hale | |
| Education | Matilda Betham-Edwards | Because of her mother's early death, MBE
, she said later, was largely self-educated, her teachers being plenty of the best books. Black, Helen C. Notable Women Authors of the Day. D. Bryce, 1893. 124 |
| Education | Maria Callcott | Maria Dundas, aged seven (later MC
), began attending a school which occupied the Manor House at Draycot in Berkshire, run by the Miss Brights, who prided themselves on having been friends of Samuel Johnson
. Gotch, Rosamund Brunel. Maria, Lady Callcott, The Creator of ’Little Arthur’. J. Murray, 1937. 19, 41 Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. |
| Education | Elizabeth Carter | She progressed on her own later to other languages such as German, Portuguese and Arabic, and to studies with Thomas Wright
which included astronomy, mathematics, and ancient civilization and culture. Much has been made of... |
| Family and Intimate relationships | John Milton | Milton's three successive marriages, and his attitudes to women and to gender, have been a constant debating point for critics, biographers, and writers of fiction. Johnson
wrote that the first wife left him in disgust... |
| Family and Intimate relationships | John Milton | The early stages of this marriage were clearly fraught with difficulty. After only a few weeks, Milton's wife went home to Forest Hill, and did not return for probably as long as three years. Her... |
Timeline
Probably 14 March 1646
Sir Thomas Browne
published his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, a giant compendium of popular misconceptions and antique thinking,
Hitchings, Henry. “Samuel Johnson and Sir Thomas Browne”. New Rambler, pp. 46 -56.
52
1723
Dr Thomas Bray
, who had founded the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
, used a bequest from a Dutch secretary to William III
to found Dr Bray's Associates
, an organization supporting parochial libraries...
20 January 1724
Elizabeth Harrison
wrote for publication, with her name, A Letter to Mr. John Gay
, On his Tragedy, call'd The Captives. To which is annex'd a copy of verses to the Princess.
1752
A pseudonymous M. Ludovicus argued explicitly that poverty drives women to prostitution, and that shelters should be provided to help them leave the trade.
7 November 1752-9 March 1754
The self-educated John Hawkesworth
edited and published an essay-periodical called the Adventurer, on the model of Johnson
's Rambler.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
18 March 1755
There was published at London an anthology entitled The Matrimonial Preceptor: A Collection of Examples and Precepts Relating to the Married State.
May 1756
The Literary Magazine: or, Universal Review (often known as the Literary Review) began publication in London; Samuel Johnson
was a contributor and, for the first four issues, the editor.
Probably 1758
Stenography, or Short-Hand Improved, by John Angell the elder
, appeared, with a prefatory dedication which has been ascribed to Samuel Johnson
.
1 December 1759
John Hawkesworth
in turn adapted Thomas Southerne
's dramatic adaptation of Aphra Behn
's Oroonoko, making it for the first time a solidly anti-slavery text.
By June 1766
James Fordyce
anonymously printed his Sermons to Young Women. It went through ninety-five British reprints by 1850, plus half as many again in the USA.
15-21 June 1772
A series of London banking firms collapsed after the bank associated with Alexander Fordyce
stopped payment; ensuing panic brought the biggest stock-market crash since the South Sea Bubble burst in late 1720.
11 April 1773
Boswell
asked Johnson
the reason why women servants were paid so much less than men, although the opposite would seem to reflect natural justice; Johnson had no answer.
21 February 1774
The House of Lords
decision Donaldson vs. Becket put an end to the legality (based in common law) of perpetual copyright. The case was provoked by the pirating activities of Alexander Donaldson
.
By March 1774
Warren Hastings
became the first English Governor-General of India.
8 February 1777
The first volume appeared in Edinburgh of Hugh Blair
's five volumes of exquisitely sentimental
Buchan, James. “That sh—te Creech”. London Review of Books, pp. 13 -14.
13
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.