The Return of the Jacobites and Other Johnsonian Topics

Abstract

Samuel Johnson: The Return of the Jacobites and Other Topics Robert Folkenflik John Cannon. Samuel Johnson and the Politics of Hanoverian England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). Pp. vii + 326. $59.00 cloth. J.C.D. Clark. Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from Restoration to Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Pp. xiv + 270. $49.95 cloth. $17.95 paper. Greg Clingham, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Pp. xx + 266. $59.95 cloth. $18.95 paper. Richard C. Cole, ed. with Peter S. Baker and Rachel McClellan, and with the assistance of James J. Caudel. The General Correspondence of James Boswell 1766–1769. The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, Research Edition, Correspondence: vol. 7 (vol. 2: 1768–1769). Edinburgh and New Haven: Edinburgh University Press and Yale University Press, 1997. Pp. xxii, 330. $75.00 cloth. Thomas Crawford, ed. The Correspondence of James Boswell and William Johnson Temple 1756–1795. The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, Research Edition, Correspondence: vol. 6 (vol. 1: 1756–1777). Edinburgh and New Haven: Edinburgh University Press and Yale University Press, 1997. Pp. lix, 479. $75.00 cloth. Leopold Damrosch, ed. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. Major Authors on CD-ROM (Woodbridge: Primary Source Media, 1997). $395.00 CD-ROM. Robert DeMaria, Jr. Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). Pp. 270. $39.95 cloth. A.D. Horgan. Johnson on Language: An Introduction (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994). Pp. ix + 226. $25.00 cloth. Samuel Johnson. A Dictionary of the English Language on CD-ROM: The First and Fourth Editions, ed. Anne McDermott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). $295.00 CD-ROM. [End Page 289] Irma Lustig, ed. Boswell: Citizen of the World, Man of Letters (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1995). Pp. xvii + 270. $37.50 cloth. Donald J. Newman, ed. James Boswell: Psychological Interpretations (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995). Pp. viii + 222. $39.95 cloth. Bruce Redford, ed. The Letters of Samuel Johnson 1731–1772; The Hyde Edition 5 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992–94). Pp. xxix + 431; xvii + 385; xvii + 399; xix + 462; xv + 174. $175.00 cloth. Thomas Reinert. Regulating Confusion: Samuel Johnson and the Crowd (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1996). Pp. 195. $49.95 cloth, $17.95 paper. Pat Rogers. Johnson and Boswell: The Transit of Caledonia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). Pp. x + 245. $49.95 cloth. Pat Rogers. The Samuel Johnson Encyclopedia (Westport and London: Greenwood Press, 1996). Pp. xvii + 483. $85.00 cloth. Arthur Sherbo. Samuel Johnson’s Critical Opinions: A Reexamination (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995). Pp. 214. $36.50 cloth. Marshall Waingrow, ed. James Boswell’s Life of Johnson: An Edition of the Original Manuscript The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, vol. 1 (Edinburgh and New Haven: Edinburgh University Press and Yale University Press, 1994). Pp. xxxi + 518. $85.00 cloth. The Age of Johnson exists as a journal title in the field of eighteenth-century studies, but what has become of the concept? The canon shifts in classrooms and anthologies are well-known. If, however, monographic studies of Samuel Johnson appeared for a time to be on the wane, this is clearly no longer the case. A combination of new accounts, scholarly editions and electronic versions, in the wake of new biographies by Pat Rogers (brief), Robert DeMaria, Jr., and Richard Holmes (a two-hander with a Stevensonian allusion, Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage), show that a somewhat different Johnson is now receiving close attention. Jonathan Clark’s Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from Restoration to Romanticism is at once a case study in Clark’s rehabilitation of Jacobitism and part of his much larger historical project. As Henry Adams once attempted to establish two points, one in the middle ages and one in modern times, and draw a historical line between them, so Clark attempts something similar, taking as his termini the late seventeenth century and the Thatcher era. But in Clark’s case, the intention is to move the line distinctly to the right and...