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 | 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. |
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. |
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 |
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 | |
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. |
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 |
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. |
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
No bibliographical results available.