Tag: Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson, the Greatest Wit and Moralist of Eighteenth Century England
Samuel Johnson was one of the most famous men of the Eighteenth century and this portrait (which I’ve copied) was made in 1772 when Johnson was 63 years of age, by his friend Joshua Reynolds, perhaps the greatest portraitist of the age. Click to learn more about this bloke.
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Highlights from Smellie’s Book Catalogue
There I am, staring directly at an Eighteenth century book collection, arms length from titles someone in 1750 would consider a ‘must have’ in their home. This is William Smellie’s library, all 300+ volumes, half of which are reference works for a teaching physician and the other half…for leisure? Two…
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Revealing the Boswell-Johnson Pilgrims
The earliest account I’ve found of someone following in the footsteps of Boswell and Johnson’s great tour of Scotland in 1773 was that of the great Johnson scholar, George Birkbeck Hill (1835-1903). It’s called Footsteps of Dr Johnson (Scotland), it was published in 1890 and it’s a great big book…
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Lost Correspondence is a ‘Mountain of Rubies’
Nothing’s hidden or lost anymore. Back in 1975 though, before broadband, smartphones and the World Wide Web put everything at our fingertips, one could still believe there were exciting discoveries yet to be made. That was the case among literary scholars who speculated about the existence of letters exchanged between…
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I Wish My Most-Used Books Were in Hardback
I own two books which through constant use and consultation are becoming increasingly raggedy, with spines I anticipate will split in 2026 accompanied by the sad ungluing of pages. In short: collapse. The books? To The Hebrides: Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and James Boswell’s Journal of a Tour…
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Boswell’s is Big, But Voltaire’s is Voluminous
Appendix 5 to James Caudle’s excellent article entitled Editing James Boswell, 1924-2010: Pasts, Presents, Futures shows the estimated number of volumes one should expect to find across an edition of a range of historical papers. He’s focused on the Scottish writer and lawyer James Boswell (1740-1795), and his appendix (not…
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Ladies and Gentlemen, Behold! Fanny Burney
Novelist Fanny Burney shared a friendship with one of the Eighteenth century’s greatest writers, Samuel Johnson, and when she died in 1840, at the age of 87, the mighty Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote of his surprise that someone who mixed in the illustrious Johnson circle, so many years ago, had…
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Crane Required to Lift Birkbeck Hill’s Book
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…
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Staring at James Boswell’s Tankard
I’m always looking for new ways to get that intimate sense of history, rather than just reading an account of something in a book. Well, if you go to Dr Johnson’s House museum in Gough Square, London, you’ll see in a locked display cabinet (I’m guessing it’s all locked up)…
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A Plaque for Burns, But Not for Boswell
There’s no mention of the visit to the Gardenston Arms Hotel, Laurencekirk, by James Boswell and Samuel Johnson on the commemorative plaque set above the front door of the flats built upon the site of the old hotel. The two travellers visited this hotel located at the northern end of…
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On the Hunt With a Boswell Guidebook
I’m aware that when I travel around Scotland I’m often crossing the path of my literary hero, James Boswell. The most recent example was while I was travelling north up the east coast of Scotland…something Boswell and Samuel Johnson did, but in a carriage, in 1773. I made a short…
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An Airplane View onto Explorers of 1773
On Wednesday 18 August 1773 a little boat sailed across the Firth of Forth from Leith to Kinghorn, carrying passengers James Boswell, the Scottish lawyer and writer, his servant Joseph Ritter, the hugely famous Samuel ‘Dictionary’ Johnson, and Scots advocate William Nairne. On Thursday 17 July 2025, I departed Edinburgh…
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Discover Boswell and Johnson’s Hotel in Montrose
Day 4 (Tuesday 22 July) Kudos to Montrose! You helpfully added an information plaque just inside a passageway indicating a James Boswell and Samuel Johnson hotspot. Here we have the location of the accommodation used by James Boswell and Samuel Johnson on their tour of Scotland in 1773. In his…
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Dr Beattie, Boswell and Johnson. Friends.
Discovering Scottish Philosopher Dr James Beattie. Often, in these little blog posts I’m trying to understand the pleasure I get in reading about historical figures. In this one I got a surprise in spotting a familiar name in an unexpected place and then a sense of connection, of completion, when…
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Sketching an 18th Century Man’s Leg
Drawing a gentleman’s leg is one of the many challenges to illustrating scenes from the Eighteenth century. And it’s something to get right – a ‘good leg’ was something for men to show off. The Third Earl of Bute (1713-1792), British Prime Minister from 1762-63, was known for having legs…
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Le Voyage de Boswell et Johnson aux Hébrides
I have a French language version of the combined accounts of Boswell and Johnson’s 1773 tour of Scotland, it’s called Voyage dans les Hébrides. My French isn’t good enough to fluently read this book (yet), but I’ve read the Boswell and Johnson accounts in English so I know the story…
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Scholar Donald Greene, Johnson Defender
I wrote a post a few months ago (Pick a Book, Any Book…) about the serendipity in making a casual selection from one’s bookcase. This post is a similar process, but focused on the outcome – the discovery of an important scholar: Donald Greene. I was dashing out the room…
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Laurence Sterne’s Mind Boggling Achievement
There are so many clever ways to start a blog post about Laurence Sterne. Here’s the Genius Fan method: “Never heard of Laurence Sterne? Stop what you’re doing RIGHT NOW, run – sprint if your knees will bear it – to the nearest book shop and buy a copy of…
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4 Hour Boswell-Johnson London Walking Tour
Last week I found myself in London with time on my hands, so I devised a short tour of points-of-interest related to that venerable concatenation of Boswell and Johnson. I started early at Paternoster Square in the City and walked it in four hours, but you could do it less…
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Buying Two Eighteenth Century Best Sellers by James Boswell and Samuel Johnson
If a bolt of lightning should strike me, leaving me dead, the person who discovers my smoking corpse (it’s always a dog walker) may notice the faintest smile on my blackened lips. If they’re perceptive they’ll read that smile as ‘satisfaction’ – and they’d be right for I now own…
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I Bought My Favourite Book by James Boswell and it’s 240-Years-Old
Yes, this site is about the Eighteenth century, but it’s also about book collecting…that is, books relevant to the, you guessed it, Eighteenth century. And it is to this hallowed conjunction of interests that I now turn my keyboard. On the dining room table where I write sits a package…
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Family and Friends Boswell Left Behind on 15 November 1762
It’s easy to lose sight of the family picture when you dig into the mountains of words, essays and books written about James Boswell. If you want to add another dimension as you read about his life, then take a moment to think about the others in his family and…
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Seven Sketches of Eighteenth Century Artists
Our imaginations are rendering machines of infinite capacity. We can conjure anything we want in our mind’s eye and, for the moment anyway, only we can tap into them. But don’t rely just on the text in your favourite book to fuel your Eighteenth century day dreams, get creative and…
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The Characters I Read About in History Have Become My Friends
In a previous post I mentioned the pleasure of ‘discovery’ when learning about a subject. It’s an interest-driven process unhindered by formality or academic structure (at least for me it is), and that’s one of the reasons it’s so enjoyable to learn through discovery. I’ve been learning about the 18th…
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Oliver Goldsmith Spent Johnson’s Rent Money on Madeira
One morning in 1762, the soon-to-be-famous Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith, was woken by an urgent rapping at the door of his London lodgings. Oliver Goldsmith was bad with money “Knock, knock!” Upon opening up, there was his landlady, threatening to bring the bailiffs unless he settle his many weeks of…
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The 250th Anniversary of Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
It’s 250 years ago this year that the Eighteenth century’s literary celebrity Samuel Johnson published his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, an account of a three-month tour he made there in 1773 with his great friend James Boswell. It was actually published on 18 January 1775, and that…