Dinner with Joseph Johnson: Books and Friendship in a Revolutionary Age

by Daisy Hay

Overview

A fascinating portrait of a radical age through the writers associated with a London publisher and bookseller—from William Wordsworth and Mary Wollstonecraft to Benjamin Franklin

Once a week, in late eighteenth-century London, writers of contrasting politics and personalities gathered around a dining table. The veal and boiled vegetables may have been unappetising but the company was convivial and the conversation brilliant and unpredictable. The host was Joseph Johnson, publisher and bookseller: a man at the heart of literary life. In this book, Daisy Hay paints a remarkable portrait of a revolutionary age through the connected stories of the men and women who wrote it into being, and whose ideas still influence us today.

Johnson’s years as a publisher, 1760 to 1809, witnessed profound political, social, cultural and religious changes—from the American and French revolutions to birth of the Romantic age—and many of his dinner guests and authors were at the center of events. The shifting constellation of extraordinary people at Johnson’s table included William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Benjamin Franklin, the scientist Joseph Priestly and the Swiss artist Henry Fuseli, as well as a group of extraordinary women—Mary Wollstonecraft, the novelist Maria Edgeworth, and the poet Anna Barbauld. These figures pioneered revolutions in science and medicine, proclaimed the rights of women and children and charted the evolution of Britain’s relationship with America and Europe. As external forces conspired to silence their voices, Johnson made them heard by continuing to publish them, just as his table gave them refuge.

A rich work of biography and cultural history, Dinner with Joseph Johnson is an entertaining and enlightening story of a group of people who left an indelible mark on the modern age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691243986
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	05/14/2024
Pages:	536
Sales rank:	688,901
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Daisy Hay is an award-winning biographer whose previous books include Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives and Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli: A Strange Romance. She is professor of English literature and life writing at the University of Exeter.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Dinner with Joseph Johnson 1

Part 1 Fire (1760-1770) 9

1 Authentic Narrative 13

2 Domestic Occurrences 21

3 The Enquirer 27

4 London 39

Part 2 Riot (1770-1780) 45

5 Joineriana 49

6 Freethinker 56

7 Essays Medical and Experimental 65

8 Paint and Washes 75

9 The American War Lamented 93

10 Thoughts on the Devotional Taste 102

Part 3 Revolt (1780-1789) 113

11 The Task 117

12 Trade Winds 135

3 Thoughts on the Education of Daughters 143

14 The Paper Age 161

15 Aphorisms on Man 174

Part 4 Ruins (1789-1791) 181

16 On Liberty 185

17 Original Stories 197

18 Views of the Ruins 216

Part 5 Refuge (1791-1795) 235

19 Evenings at Home 239

20 Things as They Are 255

21 Things by their Right Names 270

Part 6 Cave (1792-1799) 289

22 Paradise Lost 293

23 Vindication of the Rights of Woman 306

24 Original Poetry 327

25 A peep into the Cave of Jacobinism 339

26 The King Versus Joseph Johnson 354

Part 7 House (1799-1809) 367

27 IdyIlium. The Prison 371

28 Essays on Professional Education 383

29 Lycidas 403

30 Beachy Head 415

Afterword 429

Bibliography 435

List of Illustrations 453

Notes 455

Index 493

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“We usually think of the Romantic revolution in terms of its writers, from Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge in poetry to Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin in politics. But writers need publishers and booksellers. In this regard, Joseph Johnson was the man who made the revolution possible. Daisy Hay has had the inspired idea of reading Romanticism through the prism of the ‘three o’clock dinners’ where he brought the literary world together. The result is truly a biography of the spirit of the age.”—Jonathan Bate, author of Radical Wordsworth

Editorial Reviews

"A panorama of the intellectual life of a Revolutionary age. . . . This is a perfect bedside book."

Choice Reviews

08/22/2022

In this illuminating account, Hay (Young Romantics), a literature professor at the University of Exeter, sheds light on the far-reaching impact of the dinners hosted by Joseph Johnson at St. Paul’s Churchyard from 1760 to 1809. An influential bookseller, Johnson befriended, hosted, and published many of the era’s defining artists and thinkers, including William Blake, Erasmus Darwin, Joseph Priestley, and Mary Wollstonecraft, as well as painter Henry Fuseli. Hay offers a window into what went on in Johnson’s dining room and outside of it; some of what she covers is well-known, including the Priestley Riots and Priestley’s exile from Britain. But the real value of Hay’s account is in the small, humanizing stories she recounts. For instance, Wollstonecraft, who described Johnson as “a father and brother,” castigated him for interfering in her interest in Fuseli—later, Johnson would be a chief supporter of Wollstonecraft. As Hay points out, Johnson’s main attribute was kindness, and his considerable role in the intellectual development of Britain was the result of “the kinship of friends who catch each other when they fall.” Hay’s is a fascinating take on the intellectual and political development of the time. Fans of literary history will relish this opportunity to pull up a seat at Johnson’s table. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

From the Publisher