Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
AW
's father knew many of the leading figures in the science of his day, and she probably met them through him. Her celebrated friendship with Samuel Johnson
seems to have begun through his interest...
Textual Production
Anna Williams
When Boswell
read the elegy On the Death of Stephen Gray
, F. R. S., The Author of the Present Doctrine of Electricity, he at once suspected it was by Johnson
. Williams stoutly...
The New Annual Register praised the poem's thoughts, imagery, and versification, and remarked that the concluding description of the rise of art and science rises to no small degree of sublimity.
Kennedy, Deborah. Helen Maria Williams and the Age of Revolution. Bucknell University Press.
28
Samuel Johnson
...
Literary responses
Helen Maria Williams
These volumes moved James Boswell
, in a revised edition of his life of Johnson, to withdraw his earlier description of HMW
as amiable and to assert that Johnson
would have found her current attitudes...
Textual Features
Susanna Watts
SW
takes steps to prevent the cause of slavery entirely dominating her work, which, she announces, it will be devoted to the cause of suffering animals as well as to that of suffering men.
Watts, Susanna. The Humming Bird. I. Cockshaw.
34
Textual Production
Jane Warton
Her brother Joseph
(who had been invited to contribute by Samuel Johnson
in March) wrote to her on 26 April beg[ging] your Assistance in giving us some Pictures drawn from real Life. . ....
Textual Features
Jane Warton
In this last publication JW
was concerned to disabuse the public of the idea that her younger brother had enjoyed drinking and smoking with low persons in alehouses (it was the allegation of low company...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Priscilla Wakefield
Despite the title, the travel in this sequel or companion to The Juvenile Travellers confines itself to the British Isles, where one of the most pressing topics of local interest is association with writers...
Reception
Sarah Trimmer
ST
's work made a great impact. She 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.
Her spur to beginning it was reading the published personal writings of Samuel Johnson
, which moved her deeply. She wrote it in the most secret hours retreat, and without the least intention ....
Textual Production
Angela Thirkell
Her title comes from an anecdote in Boswell
's The Life of Samuel Johnson, about a man who tried to be a philosopher, but could not manage it because cheerfulness kept breaking in.
Intertextuality and Influence
Josephine Tey
The book is dedicated to those who may not prefer Scotland to Truth, but certainly prefer Scotland to enquiry—
Tey, Josephine. Claverhouse. Collins.
prelims
in a submerged allusion to Samuel Johnson
's pronouncement: A Scotchman must be a...
27 June 1777: The clergyman William Dodd was executed for...
Building item
27 June 1777
The clergyman William Dodd
was executed for forgery despite the efforts of many distinguished people to win him a pardon.
15 January 1778: A Scottish court found in favour of Joseph...
Building item
15 January 1778
A Scottish court found in favour of Joseph Knight
, a slave of African origin who had been brought to Scotland and now sued for his liberty. In effect this abolished slavery in Scotland: a...
By September 1782: The Letters of the black Londoner Ignatius...
Writing climate item
By September 1782
The Letters of the black Londoner Ignatius Sancho
were published two years after the author's death.
7 November 1783: The last public hanging took place at Tyburn...
Building item
7 November 1783
The last public hanging took place at Tyburn in London (near where Marble Arch now stands), putting an end to the practice of parading the condemned through town en route to the scene of execution.
1 October 1785: The year after Johnson's death, Boswell published...
Writing climate item
1 October 1785
The year after Johnson
's death, Boswell
published The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.
7 December 1789: Hester Lynch Piozzi heard the African John...
April 1791: The month before the appearance of his Life...
Writing climate item
April 1791
The month before the appearance of his Life of Samuel Johnson
, and as parliament debated the bill to abolish slavery, James Boswell
published a long poem entitled No Abolition of Slavery; or, The Universal...
16 May 1791: James Boswell published The Life of Samuel...
Writing climate item
16 May 1791
James Boswell
published The Life of Samuel Johnson, on the twenty-eighth anniversary of the day that he and Johnson first met.
March 1824-May 1829: Walter Savage Landor published Imaginary...
Writing climate item
March 1824-May 1829
Walter Savage Landor
published Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen.
February 1906: Publisher J. M. Dent launched Everyman's...