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Samuel Johnson [ Art and Literature ]

… Abstract Johnson was one of the foremost and most controversial literary men of his age, and a leading figure of intellectual and … tics and compulsions, blind in one eye, hard of hearing, and his face bearing the marks of his childhood scrofula, Johnson was an extraordinarily unlikely candidate for the role of one of the most sociable men of the eighteenth century. Indeed, during his peak period, from the late 1740s through until his death in 1784, Johnson’s name was virtually synonymous with sociability within the intellectual and cultural circles of London. Part of …

Patronage [ Politics & Society / Social interaction ]

… & Society Concepts > Social interaction Keywords Patronage Patron Literature commercialization Subscription Samuel Johnson Lord Chesterfield In its original meaning, patronage meant the right to confer offices within an institutional … as enlightened in this respect as Louis XIV’s France. (Griffin 10) 5 . Arthur Simons Collins, Authorship in the Days of Johnson (London: Routledge, 1927), p. 118. 6 . Walter Graham, English Literary Periodicals (New York: Thomas Nelson & … writers and critics who, for many of his contemporaries, came to exemplify the antagonism against patronage was Samuel Johnson. The most famous illustration of the decline of the system of patronage was surely Johnson’s interchange with …

Coffeehouses [ Institutions / Food & Drink venues ]

… institution. Places > Institutions Places > Food & Drink venues Keywords Coffee Coffeehouse Public sphere Club Addison Johnson Boswell Habermas Macaulay Tavern Coffeehouses were key centres of sociability in eighteenth-century Britain. They … This sense of the coffeehouse as a masculine space would only be reinforced later in the eighteenth century by the Johnsonian ideal of manly conversation promoted by James Boswell in his Life of Johnson (1791). 8 7 . Brian Cowan, ‘What Was Masculine about the Public Sphere? Gender and the Coffeehouse Milieu in …

James Boswell [ Art and Literature ]

… socialiser. He also devoted considerable time to seeking out the company of great men, not least the famous Samuel Johnson. He enjoyed, too, the company of intelligent upper-class women in terms of sociability rather than for sexual … known socially with them. As Lord Macaulay put it in his scathing review of John Wilson Croker’s edition of the Life of Johnson in 1831: ‘He was always laying himself at the feet of some eminent man, and begging to be spit upon and trampled upon’. 1  Successive eminent men included David Hume, Samuel Johnson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, and Pasquale Paoli, the Corsican resistance leader. What this view overlooks, …

Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi [ Art and Literature / Travel ]

… character herself, Hester Thrale Piozzi, now best remembered as a Bluestocking hostess and biographer of Samuel Johnson, embodies some of the contradictions of eighteenth-century sociable lives: a wealthy society lady, she went … was gradually being expanded and embellished to attract London visitors. Her life changed with the advent of Samuel Johnson in their circle in 1765: introduced by Arthur Murphy, he soon became a regular house guest and an intimate friend … sociability through her growing involvement in the brewery business to avert financial ruin, a move that Samuel Johnson had advised and in which he supported her, and by canvassing for her husband’s seat as a Member of Parliament for …

Richard Brinsley Sheridan [ Art and Literature / Politics / Association ]

… House of Commons for Stafford (1780–1806), Westminster (1806–1807), and Ilchester (1807–1812). He was a member of Samuel Johnson’s exclusive Literary Club as well as Brooks's Club, the fashionable 'Whig fraternity'. People > Art and … male-dominated world of English clubs. A favourite in society, he was ‘clubbable’, to use the term coined by Samuel Johnson and he was also known for drinking heavily and gambling. 1   He was a great socializer, using conversation as a social art and political tool and was a member of several London Clubs, such as Samuel Johnson’s exclusive Literary Club (founded in 1764 by the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds around the writer and lexicographer …