Genius Fan

A big book is annoying when it doesn’t fit onto the bookcase, especially if it’s a volume one is particularly proud or fond of. This is the case with George Birkbeck Hill’s Footsteps of Dr. Johnson (Scotland). I have a copy. I had to adjust the height of one of my bookcase shelves to accommodate it and it’s made its way to the end of the shelf where it gets half obscured behind the front panel of the bookcase, and therefore forgotten about. Despite its size! Birkbeck Hill (1835-1903) published his Footsteps account in 1890, in which he followed Johnson and Boswell’s 1773 route around Scotland (he did it in two parts: 1. Inverness to Skye and onwards, and 2. Edinburgh to Inverness). His friend Lancelot Speed was brought in as illustrator and provided 106 wonderfully evocative scenes from Birkbeck Hill’s journey. But this is a big book. I stacked it up against a range of accounts of the tour to see how it measured up. See below.

Author and biographer Hesketh Pearson (1887-1964) took it with him when he and his writer pal Hugh Kingsmill (1889-1949) wangled a book commission for their own footsteps account of the famous Boswell-Johnson 1773 adventure. Richard Ingrams, in his book God’s Apology: A Chronicle of Three Friends (describing the friendship of Pearson, Kingsmill and Malcolm Muggeridge), says Pearson took the book with him in his suitcase, but never opened it up once. Kingsmill, co-author with Pearson of their footsteps account, Skye High (1937), got the Birkbeck Hill volume from the London Library and in Ingrams’ book is reported as saying : “When I say ‘I got’ I mean the book was lowered by a crane from the attic in which it is housed and transported by Harrods to Hastings, where a shed has been erected for it, in which by an ingenious system of ladders and platforms, I can read it with some comfort.” Skye High is a truly charming read, with lengthy passages of learned, witty and often silly dialogue. Pearson and Kingsmill were inspired to make the journey after reading the first complete edition of Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides which was published in 1936. They set off on their own journey on Monday 31 May 1937. Think about that when you read the book: World War II had not yet broken out and in only months they would both experience the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. (They had both fought in World War I.) Very different times.

Let’s take a look at Birkbeck Hill’s tome!

Here’s how those volumes stack up

1. Birkbeck Hill: Footsteps of Dr Johnson (Scotland) (1973) Weight: 1.95kg; Dimensions: 286x230x50mm NOTE: My copy of this book has no publication date, but says it’s a “special commemorative edition” of 500 copies and has an ISBN number (which were introduced in 1970). An ISBN search revealed my copy dates from 1973. But there appears to be an Edition De Luxe from 1890, of 160 copies, in softback…which is even larger than this…judging from the image on Ebay it measures approx. 350mmx270mm in size.

2. Yale Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson (1961) Weight: 1.21kg; Dimensions: 242x166x45mm

3. Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson (1785) Weight: 0.74kg; Dimensions: 223x134x35mm

4. Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) Weight: 0.62kg; Dimensions: 217x138x30mm

5. Everyman’s Library: Johnson and Boswell’s accounts (2002) Weight: 0.63kg; Dimensions: 213x138x33mm

6. RW Chapman’s Tour to the Hebrides, Johnson & Boswell (1924) Weight: 0.33kg; Dimensions: 199x137x17mm

7. Ronald Black (ed) To the Hebrides, Johnson & Boswell accounts (2007) Weight: 0.55kg; Dimensions: 198x129x40mm

Notes
Footsteps of Dr. Johnson (Scotland), George Birkbeck Hill (1890)
God’s Apology: A Chronicle of Three Friends, Richard Ingrams (1977)
Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, (ed) Frederick A Pottle & Charles H Bennett (1961)
Skye High, Hesketh Pearson and Hugh Kingsmill (1937)