Joseph Johnson in the 1790s

Abstract

This profile of Joseph Johnson, firm, and in the 1790s has several aims. (1) Marilyn Gaull's recent essay on rightly questions the various labels applied to him and then asserts (also rightly) that his significance is ... intellectual not political (Gaull 266-7, 269. (2) I hope to reinforce Gaull's emphasis and to suggest why most of the labels applied to are misleading. From another perspective, I argue that Johnson's circle was more inclusive and perhaps more complex, both geographically and ideologically, than we have generally seen it to be (see e.g. Tyson, 66); we might better refer to the Johnson circles. Finally, I delineate the over-all course of Johnson's firm and standing in the trade through the 1790s, in the process characterizing the man and principles more exactly than heretofore. An appendix provides quantifiable evidence for certain of these assertions. The 1780s had been Johnson's most placid decade. His firm prospered, list of authors was considerably more extensive than it had been in the previous two decades of the firm's existence, and the topics about which they wrote were equally more diverse. He was publishing more works in concert with other booksellers than previously (in the 1770s he had published 77% of imprints on own; in the 1780s that figure decreased to 65%). His life had settled into regular routines: weekly dinners above shop, where authors, other booksellers, and friends met to share ideas and sometimes to argue; long summer holidays with friends such as Priestley and Fuseli; regular attendance at and involvement in the Essex Street Unitarian Chapel, where friends Theophilus Lindsey and John Disney shared the pulpit. Next to Priestley, the two were the most prolific authors in Johnson's list. Among the authors new to in the 1780s were Cowper, John Bonnycastle, who was mathematics master at Woolwich Acade my and the source of numerous other additions to Johnson's list, Wollstonecraft, and Erasmus Darwin--all of whom became close friends and all of whom helped evaluate and edit manuscripts. In the 1790s, Johnson's life took several turns, although initially the decade began much like the 1780s. We know more about in the 1790s than in any of the previous decades, thanks in part to the recent uncovering of one of Johnson's letterbooks, containing fair copies of letters he sent to various correspondents concerning business. (3) One letter in particular, to R. L. Edgeworth, written 18[19?] February 1799, when was making arrangements to lodge with the coachman and family while in King's Bench prison, reveals a man able to endure prison life with remarkable grace (Johnson 29v-30v). In previous decades, he had shown that he was a man of firm, decidedly tolerant principles; but the extent to which he was willing to take those principles did not emerge until the 1790s. During that decade, was active in both the Society for Constitutional Information and the Unitarian Society, serving the latter as agent for its many publications. He courageously supported friends, authors, and fellow booksellers when they needed him. As examples, he published a number of works supporting P riestley after the Birmingham riots destroyed laboratory; he testified in behalf of those arrested in the various treason trials of the '90s; and on one occasion he helped raise bail for Thomas Paine (Werkmeister 356). Werkmeister also notes that the account of Johnson's attendance at the Society for Constitutional Information was recorded by every newspaper in London. Johnson's periodicals of the 1790s underscore growing activism, especially when compared to earlier attempts to publish periodicals, which typically were marginal sectarian efforts. The Analytical Review, founded at the tail end of the 1780s, did not have a large circulation (it averaged 1500 copies an issue, compared to the 4550 of The Gentleman's 's Magazine), but it was influential and it attracted a loyal following of reform-minded clergy, writers, and the like. …