Dinner with Joseph Johnson : books and friendship in a revolutionary age / Daisy Hay.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hay, Daisy, 1981- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Johnson, Joseph, 1738-1809.

Johnson, Joseph.

Books and reading--18th century.

Books and reading.

Books and reading--19th century.

Booksellers and bookselling--Great Britain--Biography.

Booksellers and bookselling.

Publishers and publishing--Great Britain--Biography.

Publishers and publishing.

Authors and publishers--Great Britain.

Authors and publishers.

Books and reading--Great Britain.

Genre:

Creative nonfiction.

Biographies.

Physical Description:

518 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, 2022.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: pt. One FIRE (1760

1770)

1. Authentic Narrative

2. Domestic Occurrences

3. The Enquirer

4. London

pt. Two RIOT (1770

1780)

5. Joineriana

6. Freethinker

7. Essays Medical and Experimental

8. Paint and Washes

9. The American War Lamented

10. Thoughts on the Devotional Taste

pt. Three REVOLT (1780

1789)

11. The Task

12. Trade Winds

13. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

14. The Paper Age

15. Aphorisms on Man

pt. Four RUINS (1789

1791)

16. On Liberty

17. Original Stories

18. Views of the Ruins

pt. Five REFUGE (1791

1795)

19. Evenings at Home

20. Things as They Are

21. Things by their Right Names

pt. Six CAVE (1792

1799)

22. Paradise Lost

23. Vindication of the Rights of Woman

24. Original Poetry

25. A peep into the Cave of Jacobinism

26. The King Versus Joseph Johnson

pt. Seven HOUSE (1799

1809)

27. Idyllium. The Prison

28. Essays on Professional Education

29. Lycidas

30. Beachy Head.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 435-452) and index.

ISBN:

9780691243962

0691243964

OCLC:

1313904671