John Hawkesworth: Friend of Samuel Johnson and Editor of Captain Cook's Voyages and of the Gentleman's Magazine

Abstract

AS ONE ENTERS Dr. Johnson's house in Gough Square and walks into the room on the right, one notices the large James Watson engraving of the Sir Joshua Reynolds portrait of John Hawkesworth, LL.D., prominently displayed on the wall facing the square. To all but students of the Age of Johnson the name and the face would be unfamiliar, for John Hawkesworth did not leave a mark visible across the centuries. His literary contributions, however, helped formulate the intellectual atmosphere of his time and his friendship with Samuel Johnson, his edition of a classic in the literature of travel and exploration, An Account of the Voyages undertaken by the order of his present Majesty for making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere, better known as Captain Cook's or Hawkesworth's Voyages, and his prominent role as editor and contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine, the century's leading periodical, make a study of his life worthwhile. There are a number of brief biographies of Hawkesworth, but no biographer has fully recorded his life and literary activities which provide a fresh angle of vision about the Age of Johnson. Details about Hawkesworth's early years are scarce and most accounts of his life are little more than variants of the Hawkesworth biography in A General and Biographical Dictionary (1784) and Sir John Hawkins' comments in his Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1787). Even the year of Hawkesworth's birth, usually given as 1715 or 1719, has been in doubt, for he was baptized in the parish of St. Pancras on October 28, 1720 according to parish records at the London County Council,' which also include valuable information