Dinner with Joseph Johnson: Books and Friendship in a Revolutionary Age

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A portrait of a radical age via the writers who gather around a publisher's dining table - from William Wordsworth to Mary Wollstonecraft *Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2022* 'Hugely engrossing... An exciting blend of ideas and personalities' John Carey, Sunday Times 'As immersive and engaging as a multi-plot Victorian novel' Times Literary Supplement 'Impressive... An elegant account... Dinner with Joseph Johnson reminds us of the excitement of a period in which inherited orthodoxies were forensically scrutinised and found lacking' Daily Telegraph ________ Once a week, in late eighteenth-century London, writers of contrasting politics and personalities gathered around a dining table. The host was Joseph Johnson, publisher and bookseller- a man at the heart of literary life. He was joined at dinner by a shifting constellation of extraordinary people who remade the literary world, including the Swiss artist Henry Fuseli, his chief engraver William Blake and scientists Joseph Priestley and Benjamin Franklin. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were among the attendees, as were the poet Anna Barbauld, the novelist Maria Edgeworth and the philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft. Johnson's years as a maker of books saw profound political, social, cultural and religious shifts in Britain and abroad. Several of his authors were involved in the struggles for reform; they pioneered revolutions in medical treatment, proclaimed the rights of women and children and charted the evolution of Britain's relationship with America and Europe. Johnson made their voices heard even when external forces conspired to silence them. In this remarkable portrait of a revolutionary age, Daisy Hay captures a changing nation through the stories of the men and women who wrote it into being, and whose ideas still influence us today. 'Inspired... Joseph Johnson was the man who made the Romantic revolution possible... Truly a biography of the spirit of the age' Jonathan Bate

Reviews

Hay's meticulously researched biography, rich in period and personal detail, sheds light on both Johnson and the vibrant cultural world he inhabited -- Hannah Beckerman * Guardian *
[A] compelling and magnificent study... Dinner with Joseph Johnson is an admirable achievement of biography and humanistic imagination -- Katheryn Sunderland * Times Literary Supplement *
Dinner with Joseph Johnson sheds much-needed light on a key figure in both the ideological and material context of the 18th century... Hay's meticulous research brings this "paper age" to life... Evokes the noise and excitement of an age characterised by the unceasing hum of literary debate... a fitting reflection of the period that Hay describes: a time when the written word could make someone's name - or cost them their liberty * Financial Times *
This delightful book by the English literature professor Daisy Hay gives the reader the feeling of being at a rather elevated party... Johnson's guests talked, wrote and painted about democracy, human rights, atheism, feminism, anatomy, chemistry and electricity. While dreaming of a better future, they befriended each other, loved each other and criticised each other... shaped an era... Johnson was a brilliant talent spotter and supported the best minds of his day -- Emma Duncan * The Times *
A portrait of literary ferment... Daisy Hay's compendious and impressive survey illuminates the contribution to these significant ideological shifts of the ill-assorted men and women whose kinship was marked by their shared participation in Joseph Johnson's hospitality * Daily Telegraph *

Author Bio

Daisy Hay is an award-winning biographer whose previous work includes Young Romantics- The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives and Mr and Mrs Disraeli- A Strange Romance. She began her writing career as a doctoral student and then a Bye-Fellow at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge before moving to Oxford where she held the Alistair Horne Fellowship at St Antony's College and a Visiting Scholarship at the Oxford Centre for Life Writing at Wolfson College. She has also held a Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard. In 2016 she was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize by the Leverhulme Trust and in 2018 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is currently Associate Professor in English Literature and Life Writing at the University of Exeter and lives in Devon with her family.