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Notes
The obituary on Johnson, written by John Aikin, appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for Dec. 1809, pp. 1167-1168. Within the past year the first modern biographical sketch of the bookseller was published in The Wordsworth Circle by Paul M. Zall under the rather misleading title of "The Cool World of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Joseph Johnson, or the Perils of Publishing," TWC, 3, No. 1 (Winter, 1972), pp. 25-30. Aside from biographical details, our articles share only a sense of discovery.
This distrust of the booktrade, especially publishers, goes back at least to the Renaissance. Michael Drayton in a letter to Drummond of Hawthornden of 14 April, 1619, growls: "The booksellers and I are in Terms: They are a Company of base Knaves whom I both scorn and kick at." Quoted in The Letters of Tobias Smollett, ed. Lewis M. Knapp (1970), p. 12, n. 2.
Henry Curwen, A History of Booksellers (1873), p. 68. Although this assertion has never been documented, it is consistent with the number of editions of Cowper's poems Johnson published and his generosity to the poet. See Norma Russell, A Bibliography of William Cowper to 1837 (1963).
For the second part of the Botanic Garden Darwin received 1,000 guineas in advance from Johnson. Hesketh Pearson, Doctor Darwin (1964), p. 210.
These figures come from the Universal Catalogue (London, 1772-1774), Henry Maty's New Review (London, 1783), the Analytical Review (London, 1788-1790). Cadell, the second most prolific publisher in 1788, published only 53 works as opposed to Johnson's 75. Obviously a more thorough check needs to be made, but the sheer arbitrariness of the years I selected to examine is some slight protection against statistical aberration. However, I make no claim for the absolute accuracy of my figures; they are given to indicate the scope of Johnson's activity.
See Norma Russell, passim and Augustus J. C. Hare, The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, I, 174, n. 1. Both Popular Tales (1804) and Tales of Fashionable Life (1809) were printed, according to Miss Edgeworth, on very poor paper, typical of Johnson's economical methods.
A typical price for one of Johnson's pamphlets was 1/—. That for a book-length work with few or no illustrations was in the neighborhood of 4/— to 12/—.
The one significant argument between Johnson and Cowper centered upon the bookseller's reluctance to issue the translation by subscription.
John Dunton, A Voyage Round the World (1691), II, 77. Quoted in Norma Hodgon and Cyprian Blagden, The Notebook of Thomas Bennet and Henry Clements 1686-1719, Oxford Bibliographical Society Publication, N.S. VI, 1953 (1956), 6, n. 1.
Charles Knight, Shadows of the Old Booksellers (1865), p. 280. Johnson was part of this Conger for only the first two editions, 1779 and 1780.
E. Marston, Sketches of Some Booksellers of the Time of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1902), Chapter VII, passim.
J. J. Barnes, Free Trade In Books (1964), p. 173. I wish to thank Peter Thomas for bringing this item to my attention.
C. H. Timperley, A Dictionary of Printers and Printing (1839), p. 837. Timperley is the only source for this fact but it is thoroughly consistent with what we know of Johnson's conduct on the whole.
Victor Clyde Miller, Joel Barlow: Revolutionist (1932), p. 6. Barlow's Advice to the Privileged Orders was published in Feb. 1792 after Johnson apparently expressed an interest in having something on the Revolution in the spring of 1791.
John Mason Good, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Rev. Alexander Geddes, LL.D. (1803), passim.
For example, in 1774 Johnson published four works by Lindsey, among them his Book of Common Prayer Reformed, and four by Priestley, including three volumes of The Theological Repository. In 1793 he published Disney's The Reciprocal Duty of a Christian Minister and a Christian Congregation.
Farington, p. 227. The authority for this figure is a Mrs. Beaufort whose husband was R. L. Edgeworth's brother-in-law.
See Ralph Wardle's Mary Wollstonecraft: a Critical Biography (1951). It treats fully the details outlined here.
Letters of Anna Seward (1811), II, 6-7. Her letter to Christie of Jan. 15, 1788 in which she responds to his plan for the Analytical condemns "Matty-trash" [sic] and urges the young Scot to avoid the errors of the New Review.
William Godwin, Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Author of "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1799), p. 56.
William Godwin, ed. Posthumous Works of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798), IV, 75. Letter viii of this edition.
Godwin, Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, p. 64. Paul Zall in his brief sketch of Johnson states that the bookseller's practice "was to set manuscripts into type as each page was completed" (p. 27). In fact, this was used by Johnson only when pressing to publish a work by a particular deadline. The urgency in this case was his desire to capitalize on the controversy of Burke's Reflections. Mary's Vindication of the Rights of Man was the first riposte to appear.
Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman was begun soon after this episode. It was her phrase "Rights of Man" which Paine adopted for the title of his rejoinder to Burke.
Among the affidavits filed in connection with Johnson's trial for selling Wakefield's seditious pamphlet is an "Affidavit in Aggravation of Joseph Johnson," sworn by one George Holditch, which includes without comment a copy of the AR (IX) for Sept. 1798. PRO MS: KB 1/30 Michaelmas 39 Geo. III (item 29).
According to the MSS Catalogue of the Edinburgh University Library, this note was sent to G. J. Thorkelin. MSS No. La. III 379/500.
Walter Graham, English Literary Periodicals (1966), p. 189, n. 2. The figure originally came from Timperley's Encyclopedia of Literary and Typographical Anecdote (1842).
Priestley recommended the Rev. J. Bretland of Dawlish, but Johnson, for some reason, gave the job to Alexander Geddes. This occurred nearly two years before Johnson published any of Geddes' books or pamphlets. See Priestley's letter to Bretland of Sept. 2, 1788 in Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley, LL.D., F.R.S., ed. John T. Rutt (1831), II, 10.
The copy in the Rare Book Room of the Library of Congress has this notation in an eighteenth-century hand: "a treasury journal."
The review was of William Cobbett's ("Peter Porcupine") The Republican Judge, or the American Liberty of the Press.
The continuation bears on the title page: "The Analytical Review, (New Series) or History of Literature, Domestic and Foreign . . . . Vol. 1. London: printed for the editor, and sold by T. Hurst, Paternoster Row, 1799."
Johnson rented the house from Lord Dungannon beginning in 1804. Greater London Record Office (Middlesex Records) MS: MR/PLT 4812 (1804).
Priestley arranged to have those of his works written in America printed by Matthew Carey and sent to Johnson for sale. Presumably the agreement was reciprocal. Also Thomas Christie in an undated note to Johnson in the Edinburgh University Library (la. II. 647/85) mentions a supply of books to be sent to a Mr. Cronstadt in Germany. The sale was a large one for it included all of Priestley's works along with other titles.
On this point see Boswell's Life and James H. Sledd and Gwin J. Kolb Dr. Johnson's Dictionary: Essays in the Biography of a Book (1955).
Cowper closes one of his first letters to Johnson, "All your other marks have been attended to, and I thank you for them." Sept. 16, 1781 in The Correspondence of William Cowper, ed. Thomas Wright (1904), I, 355.
Zall asserts, "The secret of Johnson's commercial success lay in his gathering intellectuals like Fuseli about him as 'readers' or advisers" (p. 26). Such a view denies intellectual initiative and implies a harshly narrow standard for judging his place in literature. Besides, as we have seen in his selection of a theological reviewer for the AR, Johnson ignored the advice of Priestley and acted on his own.
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