Samuel Johnson

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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
Friends, Associates Frances Sheridan
In London they quickly acquired an influential and highly talented circle of friends, including Samuel Johnson , Samuel Richardson , Edward Young , Frances Brooke , Sarah Scott , and Sarah Fielding . Richardson admired...
Friends, Associates Mary Masters
Among the households where she lived were those of Elizabeth Carter (who sometimes read her work and discussed it with her) and of Edward Cave (the proprietor of the Gentleman's Magazine). It was Carter...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Carter
EC associated on terms of warmth and equality with men of letters or culture such as Samuel Johnson , Samuel Richardson , Thomas Birch , Moses Browne , Richard Savage , William and John Duncombe
Friends, Associates Helen Maria Williams
There she began to frequent Elizabeth Montagu 's bluestocking circle. She was introduced in cultural circles by Andrew Kippis , minister of the church her family attended, and soon knew William Hayley , Sarah Siddons
Friends, Associates Henrietta Battier
In London HB met many leading figures in cultural and intellectual life. She visited and confided in Samuel Johnson , and developed a warm admiration for him.
Battier, Henrietta. The Protected Fugitives. James Porter, 1791, http://Bodleian: 280 i 105.
xii-xv
She also met Sir Joshua Reynolds .
Friends, Associates Georgiana Cavendish Duchess of Devonshire
Georgiana did not restrict herself to this circle. She made some eminent older friends in the world of literature and culture, like Mary Delany , Elizabeth Montagu , and Samuel Johnson . From 1777 she...
Friends, Associates Susannah Dobson
Samuel Johnson , on the other hand, called SDthe Directress of rational conversation,
Johnson, Samuel. The Letters of Samuel Johnson. Editor Redford, Bruce, The Hyde Edition, Princeton University Press, 1992–1994, 5 vols.
4: 147
which sounds as if he was siding here with his friend Lennox rather than with his friends Burney and...
Friends, Associates Frances Burney
FB made friends in the older generation as well as her own. The whole Burney family loved and were loved by David Garrick . Sir Joshua Reynolds , who lived barely fifty yards away from...
Friends, Associates W. B. Yeats
Several women writers and public figures played very important roles in Yeats's life. Lady Gregory (whom he first met in London in 1894 and whose close friend he became in 1896) played a crucial role...
Friends, Associates Mary Jones
Samuel Johnson , visiting Oxford, boasted to MJ of the closeness of his friendship with Charlotte Lennox ; a few months later Jones wrote to Lennox, to say she would be visiting London soon.
Isles, Duncan. “The Lennox Collection (Continued)”. Harvard Library Bulletin, Vol.
19
, No. 1, Jan. 1971, pp. 36-60.
42-3
Friends, Associates Hannah More
Here she began to gather the circle of friends which by the end of her long life had touched every cranny of English society. She had already met Edmund Burke in Bristol the previous September...
Friends, Associates Mary Palmer
MP and her husband entertained her brother Joshua , sister Frances , and Samuel Johnson , sharing the hostess honours for several days with her married sister Elizabeth Johnson, who lived nearby.
Clifford, James L. Dictionary Johnson. McGraw-Hill, 1979.
282-5
Friends, Associates Mary Jones
MJ corresponded with Charlotte Lennox and with publisher Ralph Griffiths and his wife Isabella . Her friendship was valued by literary men like Samuel Johnson , Joseph Spence , Thomas Warton , and apparently Bonnell Thornton
Friends, Associates Catherine Talbot
Six months later CT was staying with the duchess on an extended visit. She was also a good friend of Elizabeth Montagu (of whose closeness to Carter she was sometimes jealous); of Montagu's friends George Lyttelton
Friends, Associates Charlotte Lennox
CL won the enduring friendship of Samuel Johnson and Samuel Richardson . (With Johnson she quarrelled at least once, and he took pains to heal the breach.) She introduced Giuseppe Baretti to Johnson, and had...

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