University of Virginia Library

Joseph Johnson, an Eighteenth-Century Bookseller
by
Gerald P. Tyson

During the eighteenth century literary patronage gradually shifted from the rich to an expanded reading public, which by financial leverage determined in large measure the taste of the times. The transition, though, was neither immediate nor direct. Meanwhile booksellers filled both roles, advancing cash sums (qua patron) for the copyright, and selling books of a type and in a manner that would appeal to a wide variety of readers. In fact, the shift from aristocratic patronage to that by the middle class could not have been effected without the intervention of the bookseller-publisher. But this tradesman has often been denied his share of credit by the assumption that his chief desire was to sell books regardless of their quality. Too frequently we ignore his importance in introducing new authors, perhaps thus helping to establish a new vogue, or in sustaining established writers. Even in cases where an author could afford the cost of printing his own work he had still the problem of distribution. Through his connections, however, the bookseller could handle all details of publication from choice of paper and type to advertising and wholesale distribution. But more importantly he could exercise the personal interest a patron might take in a protégé, offering more than the copyright payment. Of all the booksellers in the second half of the century none surpasses Joseph Johnson for business acumen and literary taste. It is he who published the works of Joseph Priestley, scientist and theologian; Henry Fuseli, mannerist painter and litterateur; John Newton, sea captain and evangelical preacher; Anna Letitia Barbauld, poetess; William Wordsworth; Joel Barlow, adventurer, poet, and pamphleteer; William Beckford, author of Vathek; Richard Price, mathematician and dissenting minister; Theophilus Lindsey, founder of the first Unitarian chapel in Britain; William Godwin and his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft; S. T. Coleridge;

William Cowper; Thomas Malthus; Erasmus Darwin, physician, poet, and naturalist; William Hayley, benefactor of Blake and poetaster; and Maria Edgeworth, the novelist. Of these Wordsworth, Fuseli, Mrs. Barbauld, Cowper, Beckford, Lindsey, Malthus, Darwin, Edgeworth, and Priestley were "discovered" by Johnson. Moreover, he was the exclusive English publisher for all of these writers except Wordsworth. Such loyalty between author and bookseller was unusual in a time when writers customarily "shopped around" for a publisher who offered the best terms. In some sense, then, Johnson's commitment to certain writers insured publication of their works, and constituted economic patronage. His consistent backing also reflected a desire to either establish or nourish a readership for a particular kind of literature, so create or maintain a "taste." The factors common to the majority of his authors were rational dissent, moral didacticism, intellectual inquiry, and sensibility.

In addition to his financial encouragement of authors Johnson frequently solicited Blake's "graver" from 1780 to 1804 and nearly published his French Revolution in 1791. Furthermore, Johnson's shop and apartment at No. 72 St. Paul's Churchyard were a center for the exchange of news and ideas during the American and French revolutions, since his circle of writers was, with but few exceptions, sympathetic to various kinds of social and political reform. During the early years of the French Revolution he also published monthly the Analytical Review, which quickly drew fire from government hirelings who attacked its liberal bias. But the Analytical was more than merely provocative: it consistently reviewed foreign literature—especially German drama—acquainting readers with the works of Goethe and Kotzebue.

This incomplete list of Johnson's professional accomplishments indicates the kinds and extent of "patronage" a bookseller could provide. For not only did he help authors, but he also encouraged liberal notions in his periodical, familiarizing the public with new ideas and literary trends. Curiously, Joseph Johnson has never been the subject of a biography, nor has his circle of authors ever been examined as Dryden's, Pope's, Samuel Johnson's, or Shelley's has. Regrettably, the only biographical statement we have is his obituary.[1] Today, he is

mainly remembered as the publisher of Blake's engravings, a distinction which preserves him from total eclipse.

The primary reason which has made it easy to overlook Johnson's significance is the stigma of his profession. Unlike Curll or Tonson, kept from oblivion by Pope, or unlike Dodsley, immortalizing himself by writing, Johnson left no legacy except his publications. Attending strictly to the business of bookselling, he fell into a growing and despised brotherhood of literary middlemen. In the popular view they were brokers whose backing helped make the difference between obscurity and fame, but whose interest in literature could only be measured in guineas.[2]

Much in his conduct as a bookseller invites us to include Johnson among the exploiters of literary art, living off the labors of others. His earnings on the poetry of Cowper alone were reported to be £10,000.[3] Likewise, his payment of £900 to Darwin for the Botanic Garden indicates he earned a handsome profit here too.[4] In addition to his knack for recognizing authors who would sell, Johnson also depended upon what by modern standards were sound, even shrewd, business practices by diversifying his stock. Although dealing heavily in theological and political tracts, he also published works ranging from medical texts to foreign language grammars. On the average the shop issued one new book or tract a week. From 1770 to 1780 Johnson published approximately 32 works a year, and by the end of the 1780's his annual output reached 75 separate titles for 1788 and 79 for the following year. Such productivity for these years is nearly fifty per cent greater than that of his nearest competitor.[5] All this was performed, so far as I can tell,

without any assistance or editorial help save that of a trusted servant who ran errands and arranged for weekly dinner gatherings of authors. No wonder one of Johnson's acquaintances was moved to write of him: "A worthy and most honest man, but incorrigibly neglectful, often to his own detriment."[6]

But whether he appeared to fuss with his fledglings or not, his strong business sense was demonstrated even in the slightest details of book production. The obituary tells us that he was opposed to "typographical luxury."[7] In plain terms this meant his books were completely without ostentation. Engravings were limited to works in which he took a special interest. Type faces were plain, quite common in appearance, and usually a bit smaller than most others in current use. The paper was generally the cheapest available.[8] All these factors kept the price of a Johnson issue low, so as to make it possible for a large number of readers to purchase a very utilitarian product.[9] It goes without saying that he disapproved of books that had a limited circulation because of their prohibitive cost. On this ground he seldom published by subscription except when a special demand arose as in the case of Cowper's translation of Homer.[10] Clearly Johnson wanted to put as many books in the hands of the public as he could, and if in the process he realized a large profit, so much the better.

Besides low prices, Johnson participated in Congers or syndicates of booksellers to facilitate speedy and wide distribution of his products. The implication of the term Conger is explained by John Dunton in his Voyage Round the World published in 1691: "What kind of fish is a Conger?—Why 'tis an over-grown Eel, that devours all the Food from the weaker Grigs, and when he wants other Food, swallows them too into the bargain. A poor Fly can't stir upon the water, but—pop, he's at him."[11] The facts behind Dunton's description of a Conger are

these: it was a monopolistic syndicate of tradesmen who sought to prevent underselling by rivals and to limit the individual risk they took in publishing a work of questionable commercial value. This trade practice arose at the end of the seventeenth century and continued to the beginning of the nineteenth. The members kept very few records of their transactions, preferring to do business verbally at monthly dinner meetings. In fact, Congers were often, at least in Johnson's day, named after the tavern or coffee house in which they met. Johnson belonged to one called the "Chapter Coffee House Conger." Fellow members included Dilly, Elmsley, Davies, Evans, Payne, Longman, Baldwin, Rivington, Murray, Becket, and a few others.[12] Since these organizations tended to be informal and rather ad hoc, it was common to belong to several. Besides the Chapter Coffee House Conger we find Johnson participating along with Davies, Cadell, and Strahan in the publication of Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets in 1779.[13] He also belonged to a group known as the "Friends of Literature" which published a series of books under the rubric of 'Walker's Classics.' In this case we have records showing that of the 2,000 copies for each volume, 1,000 were set aside and divided equally among the five members of the Conger: Johnson, Wilkie, the Rivingtons, Longman, and Cadell. This particular Conger met for dinner at the Queen's Arms Tavern on the third Tuesday of each month until it dissolved in April, 1811.[14]

Toward the end of his career, especially after 1800, we find scattered records of sales by Johnson to younger booksellers of his interest in certain publications. In October, 1804, for example, he sold Vernor and Hood 4/32 of his share in a Portuguese dictionary originally published by Nourse in 1773. He made £62 on the exchange. The same year, 1804, he got £23 for a 1/40 share of Dr. Motherby's New Medical Dictionary.[15] In view of his impressive business connections and publishing activity, he was undoubtedly, as his obituary put it, "a Father of the Trade." It is in this role of patriarch that we catch the last glimpse of him in his professional capacity. The occasion was consideration by Parliament in 1808 of a bill affecting the welfare of the booksellers, who, in turn, called a general meeting of all the

London brotherhood to draw up a counter proposal. Chairing the meeting, according to the records, was wasted, asthmatic, yet vital, Joseph Johnson.[16]

Consistent with his relationship to the trade was his general treatment of authors. When he could Johnson bought cheaply. In the case of Sir John Carr's journal of his trip to France in 1802, which he converted into a popular narrative titled The Stranger in France, Johnson paid £100 for the copyright. This amount just met Carr's travel expenses, but as a beginning author he was in no position to bargain for more. Joseph Farington, who knew the bookseller through Fuseli, reports of the transaction: "It has answered very well to Johnson who has made several hundred pounds by it."[17] On the other hand, for authors in whom he took a special interest, Johnson paid an equitable price. Mary Wollstonecraft's first tract of 160 pages brought her ten guineas, well above the going rate.

In the case of Mary and many other of his authors, we can observe Johnson in the role of patron most clearly. He carried his sense of obligation far beyond the purely monetary or ethical. His kindnesses extended from underwriting the publication of works he himself deemed valuable (such as Cowper's Poems and Priestley's theological and scientific tracts), to charitably purchasing manuscripts he had no intention of putting into print.[18] Beyond this humane conduct he practiced a more basic form of charity, making his home, table, and purse accessible to persons in need. We can see innumerable instances of this generosity. When Henry Fuseli, exiled from Zurich, turned up in London virtually friendless, Johnson invited the foreigner to stay in his apartment above the bookshop. Since Fuseli was fluent in German, French, and the classical languages, translating jobs were obtained for him, so he could pursue his new found interest in art.[19] Likewise, No. 72 St. Paul's Churchyard was Priestley's London headquarters during his business trips in the winter. Again, when Joel Barlow arrived in the city from Paris in July 1791, Johnson offered him the chance to write on the subject of the French Revolution in

order to earn enough to keep afloat.[20] In fact, Barlow belongs to a second generation of Americans who used the bookshop as a rendezvous, mail drop, and center of hospitality for fellow nationals and sympathizers. Around the corner from the bookshop on Ludgate Hill, Ben Franklin, Joseph Priestley, Richard Price, and undoubtedly Johnson had met during the late sixties and early seventies at The London Coffee House to discuss affairs in the Colonies. And during Barlow's stay in London friends of the French Revolution met at Johnson's for weekly suppers to voice their hopes for the new order.

Johnson not only gave support and hospitality to men with unpopular political philosophies, but he also befriended three significant minorities: Scots, Dissenters (mainly Unitarians) and women writers, especially those who might be considered radicals or free-thinkers. Clever Scots nearly always found a welcome in Johnson's bookshop. Alexander Geddes, born in Banffshire, raised a Roman Catholic, ordained a priest in Paris, and translator of the Bible for Catholics, met Johnson soon after coming to London early in 1780 and their relationship continued for twenty years.[21] Another enterprising and talented Scot, Thomas Christie, found employment with the bookseller as editor of the Analytical Review, of which more later. Other Scottish friends of Johnson included James Fordyce and his nephew George, minister and physician respectively, Thomas Cadell, publisher, and Thomas Erskine, the lawyer who challenged nearly every attempt by the government during the French Revolution to curb individual liberties.

For the Unitarians Johnson's importance is central. Not only did he publish works by Priestley, Lindsey, Disney,[22] and other Dissenting divines who laid the theological groundwork for Unitarianism, but he also negotiated the rental of an unused auction hall in Essex Street for the first Unitarian Chapel, appearing in person before the Westminster justices and petitioning them for a license to permit Dissenting worship. His last act of support for the Unitarians occurred the year before his death when he turned over to them the copyright which he

held for Archbishop William Newcome's translation of the Bible so a new version could be made from it for their worship.[23]

With his fairness toward women writers Johnson stands prominently as an exception to the rule of predatory booksellers. The most remarkable instance of his generosity toward the sex relates to Maria Edgeworth. Consistently her publisher from 1795 to 1809, Johnson, in the final days of his life, directed his nephew to pen the following note to her: "My uncle is so afflicted with the spasms and asthma, that he has desired me to write to you to say that he should ill deserve your confidence if he were rigidly to adhere to the contract, which he made for the last work [Tales of Fashionable Life]; the sale of which has enabled him to double the original purchase money, and to place the sum to the credit of your account."[24] Shortly after, she received a credit memo for £1,000.[25]

But the most enduring example of Johnson's generosity to a woman writer was his beneficence to Mary Wollstonecraft. And here I should like to dwell a bit on their personal and professional relationship to show what this bookseller did when he chose to encourage and support an author.

Mary's work was first brought to his attention by the Rev. John Hewlitt, who had used him as a publisher. In the mid-1780's Mary wrote a pamphlet titled Thoughts on the Education of Daughters which Hewlitt sold to Johnson, as mentioned previously, for ten guineas. Before Mary left on a trip to Ireland in the spring of 1786, Hewlitt took her to meet Johnson at his shop. The impressions on both sides must have been especially positive, for on the basis of this interview Mary was encouraged to begin a career in literature.[26] Her next work, unpublished until her death, was Maria, a novel begun after hearing Johnson's kind words of advice. Returning from Ireland in August of 1787, Mary came to London to make her way. Needing food and shelter, and above all seeking employment, she looked up Johnson who responded by inviting her to stay a few weeks at his shop while she settled her affairs and set up quarters in the town. Johnson assumed the responsibility of finding a lodging and in late September

obtained a house in George Street, near the south end of London Bridge. He also provided her an income by enlisting her to write Original Stories from Real Life as well as urging her to brush up on French, and to learn Italian and German in order to make translations for him. In May of 1788 her connection with the bookseller grew further as Johnson launched the Analytical Review, for which Mary was not only a reader, or editor, but also one of the major reviewers. Laboring in this somewhat Grubbean vineyard she worked with Thomas Christie, who had come to Johnson several months earlier with the proposal for a periodical on the plan of the recently defunct Maty's New Review.[27] Besides her duties for the Analytical, Mary also translated Jacques Necker's Importance of Religious Opinions, and compressed Salzman's German original of Elements of Morality with eight engravings by Blake. Reviewing these years after her death, Godwin remarked dourly that her efforts "answered the mere mercantile purpose of the day."[28]

Yet Mary's growth as a writer and social critic continued even when she wasn't engaged in some project for Johnson. For at his shop she met and came to know Joseph Priestley, Henry Fuseli, William Blake, Mrs. Barbauld, John Aikin, Thomas Paine, John Horne Tooke, Thomas Holcroft, Mary Hays, Joel Barlow, Thomas Christie, and William Godwin. Furthermore, her reviews for the Analytical put her in touch with the ideas of men she could not otherwise meet or perhaps would not have read. It was at Johnson's, too, that she conceived the now legendary passion for Fuseli. Indeed, from contemporary accounts and extant letters one gets the impression that between 1787 and 1792 her social and professional lives were one: they both centered on No. 72 St. Paul's Churchyard.

In view of the tone of some of her letters it appears that she developed an emotional dependence on her benefactor. It is certainly easy to understand her sense of gratitude toward him. For example, in an undated note she writes to Johnson: "You are my only friend—the only person I am intimate with.—I never had a father, or a brother —you have been both to me ever since I knew you—yet I have sometimes been very petulant.—I have been thinking of those instances of ill-humour and quickness, and they appeared like crimes. Yours sincerely,

Mary."[29] The gratuitous confession at the end of this letter came easily for one like Mary Wollstonecraft. Her passionate, mercurial nature, answered repeatedly by Johnson's calm, phlegmatic temper, often led her to self-reproach. No matter how dire her situation seemed, he urged a deliberate response. Once, in composing a reply to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France she reached a psychological impasse under the weight of the press deadline, since the finished portion of her manuscript had already been struck off. Appearing at Johnson's shop in a state of agitation, her mind was immediately put at ease by his offering to throw out the finished copy and relieve her of the responsibility of completing her task.[30] Whether or not his response was calculated to urge her on we do not know, but the fact is that she returned to complete the Vindication of the Rights of Man and soon after to correct it for a second edition, all in the space of four weeks.[31]

The association of Mary Wollstonecraft and Johnson came at a propitious time, for shortly after their acquaintance began in 1786 he started the Analytical Review to which she gave invaluable assistance. Johnson was the "Proprietor" of this journal, that is, the equivalent of a managing editor, handling the practical details of production and distribution. No other single venture of Johnson's occupied so much of his attention for so long a span of his career. Although its significance derives primarily from the various reviewers who helped it along, final responsibility for their selection lay with him, as did the economic burden. Ultimately it was the Analytical which contributed to Johnson's imprisonment in the final year of its publication.[32]

One of the bookseller's few extant letters shows him busily soliciting material for his new review. It is to a correspondent in Scotland,

dated June 5, 1788:

Unquestionably he put up the initial investment and kept the magazine going when things reached a low ebb. Its circulation was, for the eighteenth century, sizeable, being 1500 copies per month.[34] Johnson himself often arranged for the review of a particular book and sent manuscripts to his printer. He then supervised distribution of the finished copies to other booksellers, for which his trade connections were indispensable. Although Christie served as editor-in-chief, on one occasion we find Johnson wrestling with the problem of selecting the major theological reviewer.[35] But his other publishing duties prevented his taking a greater hand in the affairs of the Analytical, so that when replacements could not be found in 1797 for Christie and Wollstonecraft the periodical's quality fell off.

For the first nine years of its existence, however, the review stood in the forefront of libertarianism. It espoused political and social ideologies sympathetic to the French Revolution, opposed the slave trade, encouraged parliamentary reform, supported religious toleration for Catholics and Unitarians, and acquainted readers with Continental literature, especially from Germany, which, until the end of the eighteenth century, was relatively unknown in England. The format of the magazine was entirely of reviews: perhaps eight or ten lengthy ones of important works, followed by as many as twenty shorter notices.

Each issue also gave intelligence of foreign academies and political assemblies. Its importance for the history of periodicals is summed up by Walter Graham in his English Literary Periodicals: "It has been noted that the Analytical reflected the romantic or sentimental drift of literature during the 1790's better than any other periodical." For this reason he concludes, "The Analytical Review, because of its forward looking tendency in politics and literature, is unquestionably one of the most important periodical sources for the student of the late eighteenth century."[36]

The Analytical had two kinds of competition: friendly and antagonistic. Griffiths' Monthly Review and Richard Phillips' Monthly Magazine qualified for the former category since in general outlook they both agreed with Johnson's sheet. In fact, they shared a small pool of reviewers who worked for all three magazines at one time or another. On the other hand the Anti-Jacobin Review suggests by its very title an entrenched and aggressive sort of opposition. This monthly grew out of a short-lived newspaper called the Anti-Jacobin, or, Weekly Examiner which lasted just over seven months, kept alive by government financing.[37] Its more rabid successor, published by J. Whittle, addressed the reader at the end of the first year (December 1798) with this retrospective look at its chief accomplishment: "The Analytical Review has received its death-blow, and we have more reason to congratulate ourselves upon the share which we have had in producing its dissolution, than it would be expedient here to unfold."[38] Similarly, the prospectus appearing with the first number of July 1798 focused on a national enemy that needed to be exposed and rejected by Britons: the Jacobin—active, it seems, since the year of the establishment of the Analytical, and, coincidentally, the year of the first rumblings in France. Both events were seen as parts of an international scheme to bring revolution and anarchy at home and across the Channel. While the Anti-Jacobin Review could do little about affairs abroad, it could oppose men, who, in its words, "favoring the views of the French Economists and other Philosophists of modern times, have facilitated the propagation of principles, subversive of social order, and, consequently, destructive of social happiness."[39] The lead review set the tone that was to be followed throughout the volume

and succeeding ones, using the opportunity to gloat over Joseph Priestley's recent exile to America and his obscurity there.[40] Another regular department for the Anti-Jacobin's vitriol and innuendo was the section called "The Reviewers Reviewed." The purpose of this was to take liberal rivals to task, to "review the Monthly, criticize the Critical, and analyze the Analytical Reviews."[41] In the early numbers Johnson comes under heavy attack both because he was proprietor of the latter and because of his willingness to publish works "destructive of social happiness" by men such as Godwin, Priestley, Darwin, Horne Tooke, Barlow, and Gilbert Wakefield, an enfant terrible of revolutionary politics. In a characteristic review of two books attacking Wakefield's seditious tract, Reply to the Bishop of Llandaff, the Anti-Jacobin castigates Johnson and his reviewers for writing kind words about a fellow bookseller whom the government arrested for selling the infamous tract. The Anti-Jacobin reviewer writes:

Partly through the efforts of this government inspired and financed periodical, Johnson's Analytical Review shut down in 1798 only to be revived briefly by a new proprietor and staff.[43] But they could not

breathe life into it for several reasons and the last issue appeared in June of 1799. Complicating matters, Johnson had been found guilty ostensibly for selling Wakefield's seditious pamphlet and was fined £50 and sentenced to nine months in the King's Bench Prison in 1798. Owing to his wealth, however, his imprisonment was hardly an inconvenience. He rented the Marshal's House and continued to give his weekly dinner parties. Here he was visited by Maria Edgeworth and her father, Crabb Robinson, Fuseli, and all the other regular attendants of Tuesdays and Sundays. Business, too, carried on as usual from the prison. Coleridge's Fears in Solitude was issued in December as were a new edition of Cowper's Poems, Edgeworth's Practical Education, and an Introduction to the German Language. Upon his release, Johnson traveled to his home town of Liverpool for a vacation with Fuseli and a Mr. Sturch, secretary of the radical Society for Constitutional Information.[44]

The rest of the bookseller's career is a good deal less flamboyant than the first forty years. Secure in his profession and recognized as one of its leaders, Johnson obtained for himself the sine qua non of an established tradesman: a house in the suburbs. He rented Acacia Cottage in Fulham where he spent weekends entertaining his intimate friends.[45] Fuseli and Joseph Farington of the Royal Academy came often for dinner and a game of whist. Fuseli usually brought his sketch book, identifying his completed drawings with his signature and the initials "P.C." for "Purser's Cross," the location of his host's cottage.[46]

At some point around the turn of the century Johnson brought his two nephews into the business to insure its outliving him. But Rowland Hunter and John Miles could not maintain the company after Johnson's death in 1809 and soon began divesting themselves of his copyrights. Hunter eventually disposed of the shop itself in 1836.[47]

Perhaps now we can pause to give a tentative evaluation of Johnson's importance not only in terms of the history of the eighteenth-century book trade, but also as his policies affected the development of literature toward the turn of the century. As far as bookselling itself is concerned, this period saw the publication of books change from a process controlled by a relatively small group of men for whom and to

whom books were written, to one in which authors could address tens of thousands of readers having disparate backgrounds and tastes. Among the ranks of the trade, Johnson emerges certainly as a dominant figure.

With regard to the bookseller's effect on literature, we can say it too was considerable, for initially the new patrons kept the power and authority of their counterparts, deciding whom and what should be broadcast to the town and the country. (In Johnson's case we may even say the world, for through his authors he had informal connections with booksellers in France, Germany, and America.)[48] To disseminate their thoughts, new writers were virtually dependent on the taste or judgment of the bookseller. It is incorrect to think of a man like Cadell, or Longman, as acting disinterestedly in the affairs of an author. They wanted, even then, a best-seller, a money-maker. Occasionally, of course, they would suspend this pecuniary instinct to bring out a work by a friend, or to add yet another factious voice to the babel of controversy. Naturally, established authors never lacked a bookseller for long, but the untried needed an ally, a sympathetic advocate to get into print. Even if one could afford to publish at his own cost, distribution was a problem. The fossils of eighteenth-century literature can be recognized by this epitaph on the title page: "Printed for the Author and Sold at ———," usually the author's home or his printer's warehouse. An active Conger or bookseller with connections, though, could spread copies throughout the town, as well as the countryside.

All this suggests a new way of approaching the question of literary popularity and taste during the course of the century. To take an early instance, consider the initiative of the trade with Dr. Johnson. At first he despaired of anyone compiling a dictionary of the English language. Then encouraged by a syndicate he undertook the task.[49] Nor would we have his Lives of the Poets if it had not been for the urging of Davies, Strahan, and Cadell. But besides this kind of direct initiation, booksellers influenced not only the kind of work written, but also controlled, in many cases, its very content. The old notion of

the crass tradesman is overturned by a number of instances where Joseph Johnson showed surprising knowledge of a variety of subjects. For example, he edited all of Cowper's Table Talk with discreet editorial marks beside lines he had doubts about.[50] Cowper revised the poem using these queries as a guide, later writing to his publisher offering "many thanks for your judicious remarks."[51] Or again, he practiced a very high-handed sort of editing in the case of Captain John Stedman's account of his adventures in Surinam. He complained of Johnson's meddling, "the first volume of my book [is] quite marr'd, oaths and sermons inserted, &c."[52] Finally, what of the still-born works that were bought in MS but never published because they "failed to answer"?

This is not to relieve an author of his role in creating or fulfilling a taste for particular literary vogues. I am certainly not suggesting that the appeal, say, of Henry Mackenzie's Man of Feeling was due to his bookseller. Clearly, Constable, his Edinburgh publisher, saw the potential of an audience for this sentimental work which captured the essence of a long established trend. But the merit of a Cowper, exploring new poetic trends, or a Darwin, bringing a generous dose of natural history to verse, or a Priestley, ranging the outskirts of science and religion, must have been for a publisher much more problematic.[53] Taste, sensitivity both to the currently popular and to possible new directions, was needed. That Joseph Johnson had this quality in good measure seems evident. How his achievement has gone unrecognized for so long is the mystery.

Notes