Generous Liberal-Minded Men: Booksellers and Poetic Careers in Johnson's Lives of the Poets

Abstract

Scholars have long recognized that Samuel Johnson is enmeshed in print culture. What has been less noticed is the attention he pays to the world of print in the Lives of the Poets, where he often describes poetic careers in terms of a series of negotiations with booksellers. Most earlier literary biographers regarded the world of print as negligible, and most later ones viewed the poet as a solitary genius, for whom publishers and critics and sales figures could only be a hindrance. Johnson, however, who grew up in a bookshop and referred to the booksellers as ‘generous liberal-minded men; he saw the business of books as an essential part of telling the story of the poet, even as an encouragement to poetic production. Johnson's conception of this relationship between poet and bookseller emerges especially in the Lives of John Milton, who lived before the modern print regime; Alexander Pope, who mastered its intricacies; and Richard Savage, who played the game and lost spectacularly.