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Dinner with Joseph Johnson
Once a week, in late eighteenth-century London, writers of contrasting politics and personalities gathered around a dining table. The host was Joseph Johnson, publisher and bookseller: a man at the heart of literary life. He was joined at dinner by a shifting constellation of extraordinary people who remade the literary world, including the Swiss artist Henry Fuseli, his chief engraver William Blake and scientists Joseph Priestley and Benjamin Franklin. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were among the attendees, as were the poet Anna Barbauld, the novelist Maria Edgeworth and the philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft.
Johnson's years as a maker of books saw profound political, social, cultural and religious shifts in Britain and abroad. Several of his authors were involved in the struggles for reform; they pioneered revolutions in medical treatment, proclaimed the rights of women and children and charted the evolution of Britain's relationship with America and Europe.
Johnson made their voices heard even when external forces conspired to silence them. In this remarkable portrait of a revolutionary age, Daisy Hay captures a changing nation through the stories of the men and women who wrote it into being, and whose ideas still influence us today.
'Inspired... Joseph Johnson was the man who made the [Romantic] revolution possible... Truly a biography of the spirit of the age' Jonathan Bate
Johnson's years as a maker of books saw profound political, social, cultural and religious shifts in Britain and abroad. Several of his authors were involved in the struggles for reform; they pioneered revolutions in medical treatment, proclaimed the rights of women and children and charted the evolution of Britain's relationship with America and Europe.
Johnson made their voices heard even when external forces conspired to silence them. In this remarkable portrait of a revolutionary age, Daisy Hay captures a changing nation through the stories of the men and women who wrote it into being, and whose ideas still influence us today.
'Inspired... Joseph Johnson was the man who made the [Romantic] revolution possible... Truly a biography of the spirit of the age' Jonathan Bate
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First published January 1, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
May 29, 2022
Having spent the last couple of years researching, for a project of my own, the circle of artists and writers around Joseph Johnson, it was with somewhat unworthy mixed feelings that I saw that Daisy Hay has now written a bumper – I'm tempted to say ‘definitive’ – book about that very group. Obviously it's great that they're getting the recognition they deserve. But it's like when you're really into some obscure band, and then they get a song used in a car advert and suddenly everyone's a fan.
Hay has form when it comes to group biographies – her most popular book, Young Romantics, is about the tangled group around the Shelleys, which is to say the generation or two following the one looked at here. Mary Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was a key member of the weekly dinners that Joseph Johnson held above his bookshop in St Paul's Churchyard, as was the artist Henry Fuseli, whose painting The Nightmare hung over the dining-table; other members, at various times, included Joseph Priestley, Thomas Paine, Joel Barlow, Anna Letitia Barbauld, Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Malthus, Gilbert Wakefield and William Godwin, as well as more distantly related personalities like William Blake (one of Johnson's best engravers) and the poet William Cowper.
The links between these people – mediated by Johnson's dinners – have been surprisingly obscure, since Johnson himself is not particularly well known unless you're really into the history of publishing. (The only biography of him is Gerald P. Tyson's workmanlike and long out of print Joseph Johnson, A Liberal Publisher from 1979.) Instead, their connections emerge indistinctly, by cross-referencing books of art history, political science, and Georgian letters and diaries. I became aware of it all quite slowly, piecing things together from comments in Wollstonecraft biographies, Fuseli monographs, annotated editions of Paine's pamphlets. Because of this, some people have questioned whether there was such a thing as a ‘Johnson circle’ at all – not whether these people really met, but whether they can be said to have shared any kind of coherent political or philosophical position.
If nothing else, this book should put that question to rest pretty conclusively. Hay's research is really excellent, turning up all kinds of pertinent new comments from archives and private collections as well as the standard references, and assembling it into a convincing story of how Johnson's stable of writers and illustrators fought consistently for the liberalisation of religion, science, politics and human rights, until they were, all in their various ways, crushed by the conservative backlash to the French Revolution.
There were parts of this story I thought I knew really well, where I still learned a lot. She's very good, for instance, on Johnson's project to produce a new edition of Milton, with Cowper providing editorial commentary and Fuseli producing illustrations (‘He seems quite at home in hell,’ Wollstonecraft commented, seeing him at work on his pictures of Satan). The task was epic in scale: it finished Cowper off completely, and nearly did the same for Fuseli. Hay is also very good at evoking the later period when Pitt's government finally succeeded in getting Johnson sent to prison, a part of the story that has not been well told before (drawing in part on some newly discovered letters published in 2016).
There are so many big personalities involved here that, ironically, the only character who feels a little underdeveloped is Joseph Johnson himself. This is perhaps inevitable, since in the oblique references to him we find in other contexts, he seems to have been a fairly mild-mannered, gentle soul, always happy to disappear into the background as louder, more eccentric voices spoke over him. But there's no doubt he deserves recognition as a softly-spoken prime mover among some of the biggest firebrands of the time. If you're interested in group biographies from this period, this is in the same vein as Jenny Uglow's The Lunar Men, Leo Damrosch's The Club, or indeed Hay's earlier Young Romantics, but, for my money, dealing with an even more exciting period in culture and politics, and bringing it to life brilliantly.
Hay has form when it comes to group biographies – her most popular book, Young Romantics, is about the tangled group around the Shelleys, which is to say the generation or two following the one looked at here. Mary Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was a key member of the weekly dinners that Joseph Johnson held above his bookshop in St Paul's Churchyard, as was the artist Henry Fuseli, whose painting The Nightmare hung over the dining-table; other members, at various times, included Joseph Priestley, Thomas Paine, Joel Barlow, Anna Letitia Barbauld, Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Malthus, Gilbert Wakefield and William Godwin, as well as more distantly related personalities like William Blake (one of Johnson's best engravers) and the poet William Cowper.
The links between these people – mediated by Johnson's dinners – have been surprisingly obscure, since Johnson himself is not particularly well known unless you're really into the history of publishing. (The only biography of him is Gerald P. Tyson's workmanlike and long out of print Joseph Johnson, A Liberal Publisher from 1979.) Instead, their connections emerge indistinctly, by cross-referencing books of art history, political science, and Georgian letters and diaries. I became aware of it all quite slowly, piecing things together from comments in Wollstonecraft biographies, Fuseli monographs, annotated editions of Paine's pamphlets. Because of this, some people have questioned whether there was such a thing as a ‘Johnson circle’ at all – not whether these people really met, but whether they can be said to have shared any kind of coherent political or philosophical position.
If nothing else, this book should put that question to rest pretty conclusively. Hay's research is really excellent, turning up all kinds of pertinent new comments from archives and private collections as well as the standard references, and assembling it into a convincing story of how Johnson's stable of writers and illustrators fought consistently for the liberalisation of religion, science, politics and human rights, until they were, all in their various ways, crushed by the conservative backlash to the French Revolution.
There were parts of this story I thought I knew really well, where I still learned a lot. She's very good, for instance, on Johnson's project to produce a new edition of Milton, with Cowper providing editorial commentary and Fuseli producing illustrations (‘He seems quite at home in hell,’ Wollstonecraft commented, seeing him at work on his pictures of Satan). The task was epic in scale: it finished Cowper off completely, and nearly did the same for Fuseli. Hay is also very good at evoking the later period when Pitt's government finally succeeded in getting Johnson sent to prison, a part of the story that has not been well told before (drawing in part on some newly discovered letters published in 2016).
There are so many big personalities involved here that, ironically, the only character who feels a little underdeveloped is Joseph Johnson himself. This is perhaps inevitable, since in the oblique references to him we find in other contexts, he seems to have been a fairly mild-mannered, gentle soul, always happy to disappear into the background as louder, more eccentric voices spoke over him. But there's no doubt he deserves recognition as a softly-spoken prime mover among some of the biggest firebrands of the time. If you're interested in group biographies from this period, this is in the same vein as Jenny Uglow's The Lunar Men, Leo Damrosch's The Club, or indeed Hay's earlier Young Romantics, but, for my money, dealing with an even more exciting period in culture and politics, and bringing it to life brilliantly.
Read
January 5, 2024Absolutely massive (500pp, large hardback, small type) tome covering, basically, all the people published by Joseph Johnson over the end of the 18th century. Big names (Fuseli, Wollstonecraft, Godwin, Barbault, Cowper, Priestley, Blake). Kind of a biography of the era told through the lives of these and more people, centred around Johnson's regular dinners.
I have to be honest: it was more than I found I wanted to know, especially in one go. I may very well return to it because it's an excellent deep dive into the politics, religion, morality, literature, education, culture, feminism etc scene of the era, but I'm only on p.276 and I am surfeited for now. Also Wordsworth has turned up, and honestly, fuck Wordsworth.
A good book, just a lot.
I have to be honest: it was more than I found I wanted to know, especially in one go. I may very well return to it because it's an excellent deep dive into the politics, religion, morality, literature, education, culture, feminism etc scene of the era, but I'm only on p.276 and I am surfeited for now. Also Wordsworth has turned up, and honestly, fuck Wordsworth.
A good book, just a lot.
June 21, 2023
Twenty years ago, I purchased The Lunar Men by Jenny Uglow, a book about five men who met once a month to discuss fascinating scientific, literary and political ideas in 18th century England. It was not a well-worn path for me, and a bit pretentious, honestly. I never gained a reading traction and rather quickly abandoned it. That doesn't mean it was a bad book. There are many reasons, mostly on this reader's side of the equation, that cause a book to go on the DNF shelf.
That experience didn't stop me from getting "Dinner with Joseph Johnson" which covers in an overlapping way the same period and some of the same players. I found the title intriguing, and too, the quick blurb description. Joseph Johnson, whom I had not previously known about, was an 18th century successful bookseller. He gloried in publishing authors who needed to be heard, and he gloried in the civil exchange of ideas. To that latter end, he hosted dinner weekly and invited interesting people as his guests.
The food, we're told, was nothing special, but the conversation always stimulated. You know those little celebrity pieces where they ask what four friends would you invite to dinner? Well, on any weeknight, Johnson might host Erasmus Darwin, Joseph Priestly, Benjamin Franklin, William Wordsworth, Humphry Davy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Paine. Would it matter what the entrée was?
This is not, though, some rehash of intellectual ideas. Stuff was happening. There was revolution in France, and the English king was not happy. Authors and publishers, mere booksellers could go to prison.
What made this book special for me was the biography within of Joseph Johnson, really an extraordinary man. And like a nesting doll, there is the story of how Johnson championed, nurtured Mary Wollstonecraft. I knew hardly anything about her (thus exposing my want of feminist credentials) but she is treated brilliantly herein. And there's a triangle to be told here, with Johnson and Wollstonecraft and the painter Henry Fuseli. Only Johnson's side of the triangle was platonic. So, there's sex, too.
I learned some interesting things. Like, the building where Johnson hosted his dinners, at St. Paul's Churchyard, no longer survives. It was destroyed in one of the deadliest raids of the Blitz in 1940, along with over five million books. Imagine.
William Blake pops up frequently in this history, but he hasn't written a poem yet. Instead, he was a much sought-after engraver. I didn't know that either.
Daisy Hay just wrote the hell out of this story. So good, I'll give her the final word. Here's how she treats Joseph Johnson at book's end:
In his dining room and in the books, pamphlets, tracts, journals and images he published he created a space for new ideas to emerge about childhood, the position of women, religious freedom, science, medicine, Europe, poetry and domestic and international politics. In the manner in which he worked he was in every respect a man of his time, an upstanding figure who lived as he believed others should. But through the ideas he captured he remains a man of our time too. In his house and dining room he created a family tied by loyalty rather than blood. His story reveals, again and again, the kinship of friends who catch each other when they fall. In actions rather than words he demonstrated the power of kindness and community to challenge systems of social control founded on separateness and division. He worked for a world where children are recognized as reasonable creatures, entitled to an education and a childhood; and in which professional women are unconstrained by reactionary vitriol. He celebrated a vision of an interconnected Europe and of a nation as more than its politics. He gave space to poets and artists who found new ways of seeing, and to scientists and doctors who saw beauty in new forms of knowledge. He leaves us all this in the conversations he created and the books he made.
That experience didn't stop me from getting "Dinner with Joseph Johnson" which covers in an overlapping way the same period and some of the same players. I found the title intriguing, and too, the quick blurb description. Joseph Johnson, whom I had not previously known about, was an 18th century successful bookseller. He gloried in publishing authors who needed to be heard, and he gloried in the civil exchange of ideas. To that latter end, he hosted dinner weekly and invited interesting people as his guests.
The food, we're told, was nothing special, but the conversation always stimulated. You know those little celebrity pieces where they ask what four friends would you invite to dinner? Well, on any weeknight, Johnson might host Erasmus Darwin, Joseph Priestly, Benjamin Franklin, William Wordsworth, Humphry Davy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Paine. Would it matter what the entrée was?
This is not, though, some rehash of intellectual ideas. Stuff was happening. There was revolution in France, and the English king was not happy. Authors and publishers, mere booksellers could go to prison.
What made this book special for me was the biography within of Joseph Johnson, really an extraordinary man. And like a nesting doll, there is the story of how Johnson championed, nurtured Mary Wollstonecraft. I knew hardly anything about her (thus exposing my want of feminist credentials) but she is treated brilliantly herein. And there's a triangle to be told here, with Johnson and Wollstonecraft and the painter Henry Fuseli. Only Johnson's side of the triangle was platonic. So, there's sex, too.
I learned some interesting things. Like, the building where Johnson hosted his dinners, at St. Paul's Churchyard, no longer survives. It was destroyed in one of the deadliest raids of the Blitz in 1940, along with over five million books. Imagine.
William Blake pops up frequently in this history, but he hasn't written a poem yet. Instead, he was a much sought-after engraver. I didn't know that either.
Daisy Hay just wrote the hell out of this story. So good, I'll give her the final word. Here's how she treats Joseph Johnson at book's end:
In his dining room and in the books, pamphlets, tracts, journals and images he published he created a space for new ideas to emerge about childhood, the position of women, religious freedom, science, medicine, Europe, poetry and domestic and international politics. In the manner in which he worked he was in every respect a man of his time, an upstanding figure who lived as he believed others should. But through the ideas he captured he remains a man of our time too. In his house and dining room he created a family tied by loyalty rather than blood. His story reveals, again and again, the kinship of friends who catch each other when they fall. In actions rather than words he demonstrated the power of kindness and community to challenge systems of social control founded on separateness and division. He worked for a world where children are recognized as reasonable creatures, entitled to an education and a childhood; and in which professional women are unconstrained by reactionary vitriol. He celebrated a vision of an interconnected Europe and of a nation as more than its politics. He gave space to poets and artists who found new ways of seeing, and to scientists and doctors who saw beauty in new forms of knowledge. He leaves us all this in the conversations he created and the books he made.
May 21, 2022
I have enjoyed other books by Daisy Hay - 'Mr and Mrs Disraeli' and 'Young Romantics,' so I was keen to read her latest. Joseph Johnson was the proprieter of a bookshop under the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral and, once a week, he would issue an invitation to dinner. Joseph was the third child of Liverpool Baptists and, as a Dissenter, knew many professions would be closed to him. His parents sent him to London to undertake an apprenticeship with a bookseller and he set up his own premises later.
This book covers most of the 1700's and it was, indeed, a turbulent and revolutionary age. Those who arrived at Mr Johnson's table included Mary Wollstonecraft, Henry Fuseli and Joseph Priestley, among many others. It was a time of Revolution - the American and French Revolution being the two major events of his lifetime. However, it was also a period of revolution in science, medicine and education. Johnson was at the forefront of much of this, publishing periodicals, scientific texts and early works for children which had illustrations. There were often little, or no, financial rewards for publishing books by anatomists, mathematicians and chemists, for either publisher or author, but Johnson was an advocate for religious and civil liberty, an abolitionist and published books on science, as well as on the education of girls and women. He was involved in publishing many books that aimed to educate the public as to the reality of the times, such as, "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano" the autobiography of a former slave, and supported Mary Wollstonecraft financially, to enable her to write.
However, as a Dissenter, Johnson was often seen as suspect by the authorities. As the French Revolution descended into bloodshed, the radical views of Johnson and his authors came under scrutiny. Books that demanded reform were seen as dangerous and many Dissenters came under attack. This is an interesting account of a man who attempted to publish, and sell, books that would educate and improve the lives of those who read them. He was obviously interested in publishing work that would sell, but was not overly interested in commercialism and always seemed to try to sell books at a reasonable price. It is also a fascinating look at a revolutionary period of history and how those writing, reading and sitting in coffee shops and at dinner tables, were inspired to talk, write about and change the times they were living in.
This book covers most of the 1700's and it was, indeed, a turbulent and revolutionary age. Those who arrived at Mr Johnson's table included Mary Wollstonecraft, Henry Fuseli and Joseph Priestley, among many others. It was a time of Revolution - the American and French Revolution being the two major events of his lifetime. However, it was also a period of revolution in science, medicine and education. Johnson was at the forefront of much of this, publishing periodicals, scientific texts and early works for children which had illustrations. There were often little, or no, financial rewards for publishing books by anatomists, mathematicians and chemists, for either publisher or author, but Johnson was an advocate for religious and civil liberty, an abolitionist and published books on science, as well as on the education of girls and women. He was involved in publishing many books that aimed to educate the public as to the reality of the times, such as, "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano" the autobiography of a former slave, and supported Mary Wollstonecraft financially, to enable her to write.
However, as a Dissenter, Johnson was often seen as suspect by the authorities. As the French Revolution descended into bloodshed, the radical views of Johnson and his authors came under scrutiny. Books that demanded reform were seen as dangerous and many Dissenters came under attack. This is an interesting account of a man who attempted to publish, and sell, books that would educate and improve the lives of those who read them. He was obviously interested in publishing work that would sell, but was not overly interested in commercialism and always seemed to try to sell books at a reasonable price. It is also a fascinating look at a revolutionary period of history and how those writing, reading and sitting in coffee shops and at dinner tables, were inspired to talk, write about and change the times they were living in.
May 1, 2024
When I came across this book, its title and summary fascinated me. Joseph Johnson was a late 18th & early 19th century publisher, bookseller and radical. Not only did he publish and sell the work of some of the greatest writers of the period, but he provided a step up for others, held weekly dinners where friends, writers and scientists would congregate and he was a supporter of the anti-slavery campaign, religious freedom, women's rights and an extension of the franchise. Initially he also supported the aims of the French Revolution. He spent some time in prison for the crime of selling a pamphlet opposing the war with France. And yet until I read this book, I had never heard of Joseph Johnson.
Among those he published or helped or employed or befriended were poets like William Blake, William Cowper, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He published the work of religious dissenters and non-comformists like Joseph Priestly, scientists like Erasmus Darwin (whose grandson Charles developed some of Erasmus' ideas into the theory of evolution), Humphrey Davy and Benjamin Franklin, painters like Henry Fuseli and social and political thinkers like Thomas Malthus. He also published and sold work by Thomas Paine, including his famous "The Rights of Man".
He was one of the first publishers and booksellers to take the work of women seriously, publishing the poetry of Anna Barbauld, the novels of Maria Edgeworth, the work of Mary Hays and many others, including most importantly of all the work of the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote books about the education of girls, poetry and biography, as well as the highly influential "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" - a text that continues to inspire people today. Her daughter Mary later became famous as the author of the Gothic novel "Frankenstein", a story that has inspired many others, particularly film makers.
The author of this unusual and fascinating book uses Johnson and those he worked with as a way of analysing the many changes that took place in Britain during this period. A wonderful book full of surprises.
Among those he published or helped or employed or befriended were poets like William Blake, William Cowper, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He published the work of religious dissenters and non-comformists like Joseph Priestly, scientists like Erasmus Darwin (whose grandson Charles developed some of Erasmus' ideas into the theory of evolution), Humphrey Davy and Benjamin Franklin, painters like Henry Fuseli and social and political thinkers like Thomas Malthus. He also published and sold work by Thomas Paine, including his famous "The Rights of Man".
He was one of the first publishers and booksellers to take the work of women seriously, publishing the poetry of Anna Barbauld, the novels of Maria Edgeworth, the work of Mary Hays and many others, including most importantly of all the work of the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote books about the education of girls, poetry and biography, as well as the highly influential "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" - a text that continues to inspire people today. Her daughter Mary later became famous as the author of the Gothic novel "Frankenstein", a story that has inspired many others, particularly film makers.
The author of this unusual and fascinating book uses Johnson and those he worked with as a way of analysing the many changes that took place in Britain during this period. A wonderful book full of surprises.
October 23, 2023
Beautiful book that shines a light on a number of authors, poets, preachers and artists from the 18th century, through their affiliation to Joseph Johnson, an influential bookseller who became a central part of their life, both professional and personal. Not a lot is known about Johnson in the first person, so the book relies heavily on second-hand accounts, following the characters as they move across Britain and the world and highlighting how he remained a key figure in their lives even after they were forced to emigrate for political, religious, or sentimental reasons. We look from afar at many world-changing events including the French and the American revolutions, and from close at several intriguing figures of English reformism and the beginning of the 19th century, including several who (at least for me) were mostly known in terms of their children and grandchildren (including Erasmus Darwin and Mary Wollstonecraft). The book goes quite in-depth in a lot of inter-personal correspondence and I think a few cuts and edits here and there could have improved the experience.
April 10, 2024
Well written and much more interesting than I imagined when it was recommended by a goup member. It deftly connects the unrest and resistance of the populace in Europe particularly France and England with what was happening in the U.S. There was a push for greater freedom of belief and speech on both sides of the Atlantic. The brutality of how the oppressers in power chose to suppress speech and writings by resorting to violence and destruction of property, holds lessons for us, that we must protect our freedoms or risk losing them. Not for everyone, but for anyone interested in what the political climate was like at the time our country was in its formative stages.
April 26, 2023
A great read that is both educational and enlightening. As the subtitle has it: Books and friendship in a Revolutionary Age. Hay offers a peak into literary London in the late 1700s, a time of religious strife, governmental oppression, and the long shadow of the French Revolution. Johnson was an early champion of women authors, and a great friend to many. Among the cameo appearances in this book: Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, Joseph Priestly, Erasmus Darwin (Charles' grandfather), William Wordsworth, William Cowper, Samuel Coleridge and Thomas Malthus. A wonderful cultural history!
August 27, 2023
A primer in how to collaborate intellectually with a diverse group of thinkers who care to be different. This is especially important in today's American society (2023) where the population sees to glory in its divisions. Over and again we hear the refrain, "how do we bring America together?" This volume provides the answer.
October 7, 2023
Lovely, enjoyable and informative.
Hay really managed to bring to life the group of people who came to Johnson's table, and bring new insights. Johnson himself is rather a shadow in the book - as often are those who conduct, but nonetheless a well-researched and eminently readable account of personalities and events during a fascinating and complex period of history.
Hay really managed to bring to life the group of people who came to Johnson's table, and bring new insights. Johnson himself is rather a shadow in the book - as often are those who conduct, but nonetheless a well-researched and eminently readable account of personalities and events during a fascinating and complex period of history.
Want to read
March 9, 2022Mentioned in Slightly Foxed The Real Reader’s Quarterly No. 73 Spring 2022 - A Year in Barsetshire by Daisy Hay.
March 4, 2024
4 1/2 stars
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