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 Author name Sort descending Excerpt
Intertextuality and Influence Hannah More
The title-page quotation from Paradise Lost features the archangel Raphael's pronouncement that it is better for human beings to know That which before us lies in daily life than things remote.
Feminist Companion Archive.
According to critic...
Textual Production Jan Morris
More than a decade later, in 1978, JM followed her own portrait of Oxford by editing The Oxford Book of Oxford, a quirky anthology of often very short anecdotes and other excerpts, aimed less...
Textual Features Anne Mozley
These attractive essays in belles lettres employ a relaxed, personal speaking voice (which does not, however, reveal its gender), which puts forward literary opinions with casual confidence. Many essays (like Samuel Johnson 's before them)...
Textual Features Georgina Munro
A debauched earl is the narrator of this novel, which, typically for the genre, is peopled by characters from the gentry and the upper classes.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
744 (1842):110
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
The story is set during the reign of...
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Murray
The Guide to Scotland opens with instructions: Provide yourself with a strong roomy carriage, and have the springs well corded; have also a stop-pole and strong chain to the chaise. Take with you linch-pins, and...
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Murray
The material already printed in 1799 was considerably re-arranged in 1803, and some of it moved to the second volume. SM opens by describing the better route she has discovered for leaving London. She...
Intertextuality and Influence Charlotte Nooth
The governess Matilda regrets that there are no professions for women; nothing is to be done but by the sacrifice of our rank in society.
Nooth, Charlotte. Eglantine; or, The Family of Fortescue. Valpy, 1816, 2 vols.
1: 199
She calls herself quite a detached being, alone...
Intertextuality and Influence Charlotte Nooth
The novel combines domestic humour and social satire. The courtship of Eglantine Fortescue and the young officer Augustus Fitzroy is almost overshadowed by the broad-brush picture of their families and friends. Eglantine incurs disapproval first...
Textual Features Adelaide O'Keeffe
The list of correspondents is indeed potentially helpful, since the cast of characters is complicated. Six people exchange letters about the education of a boy and a girl, Dudley Clonmore and Claudy Howard, on the...
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. Editor Hill, George Birkbeck, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1905, 3 vols.
1: 247
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
Intertextuality and Influence Emma Parker
EP says she has studied to avoid a dictatorial tone . . . considering herself rather as one of those [women] she is addressing.
Parker, Emma. Important Trifles. T. Egerton, 1817.
prelims
qtd. in
Feminist Companion Archive.
She writes as a strong-minded Christian, and makes use of...
Textual Features Hester Lynch Piozzi
HLP concentrates on the fine shades of difference between near synonyms, for instance Affability, Condescension, Courtesy, and Graciousness.
Winchester, Simon. “Roget and his Brilliant, Unrivalled, Malign, and Detestable Thesaurus”. Atlantic Monthly, Vol.
287
, No. 5, May 2001, pp. 53-75.
57
She sometimes draws on Johnson 's Dictionary but does not always entirely agree with it. She...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Hester Lynch Piozzi
Her annotations were a vehicle for her own reminiscences and critical writing. When she marked up her copy of Boswell 's Life of Johnson she contradicted Boswell regularly, offering evidence or reasoning to prove his...
Literary responses Hester Lynch Piozzi
HLP was one of the twenty-four most-reviewed women writers of 1789-90.
Hawkins, Ann R., and Stephanie Eckroth, editors. Romantic Women Writers Reviewed. Vol. 3 vols., Ashgate Publishing Company, 2011–2013, 3 vols.
Though scholarship on her has grown immeasurably—from James L. Clifford 's biography of 1941 to Edward A. Bloom and Lillian D. Bloom 's edition...

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