Johnson Samuel - Samuel Johnson: the struggle

Table of Contents

BOOKS BY JEFFREY MEYERS

BIOGRAPHY
A Fever at the Core: The Idealist in Politics
Married to Genius
Katherine Mansfield
The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis
Hemingway
Manic Power: Robert Lowell and His Circle
D. H. Lawrence
Joseph Conrad
Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy
Scott Fitzgerald
Edmund Wilson
Robert Frost
Bogart: A Life in Hollywood
Gary Cooper: American Hero
Privileged Moments: Encounters with Writers
Wintry Conscience: A Biography of George Orwell
Inherited Risk: Errol and Sean Flynn in Hollywood and Vietnam
Somerset Maugham

Impressionist Quartet: The Intimate Genius of Manet and Morisot, Degas and Cassatt

Modigliani

CRITICISM
Fiction and the Colonial Experience
The Wounded Spirit: T. E. Lawrences Seven Pillars of Wisdom

A Readers Guide to George Orwell
Painting and the Novel
Homosexuality and Literature
D. H. Lawrence and the Experience of Italy
Disease and the Novel
The Spirit of Biography
Hemingway: Life into Art

BIBLIOGRAPHY

T. E. Lawrence: A Bibliography
Catalogue of the Library of the Late Siegfried Sassoon
George Orwell: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism

EDITED COLLECTIONS

George Orwell: The Critical Heritage
Hemingway: The Critical Heritage
Robert Lowell: Interviews and Memoirs
The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Reader
The W. Somerset Maugham Reader

EDITED ORIGINAL ESSAYS

Wyndham Lewis: A Revaluation
Wyndham Lewis by Roy Campbell
D. H. Lawrence and Tradition
The Legacy of D. H. Lawrence
The Craft of Literary Biography
The Biographers Art
T. E. Lawrence: Soldier, Writer, Legend
Graham Greene: A Revaluation

FOR JAMES SALTER

1. Michael Johnson, engraving by Edward Francis Finden, c.1830Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum, Lichfield

2. Samuel Johnson by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1756-57National Portrait Gallery, London

3. David Garrick by Thomas Gainsborough, 1770National Portrait Gallery

4. Elizabeth Johnson, artist unknownHoughton Library, Harvard University

5. Bennet Langton, artist unknownSamuel Johnson Birthplace Museum

6. Giuseppe Baretti, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1773National Portrait Gallery

7. Samuel Johnson by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1769Houghton Library, Harvard University

8. Self-Portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1747-48National Portrait Gallery

9. Edmund Burke, studio of Sir Joshua ReynoldsNational Portrait Gallery

10. Oliver Goldsmith, studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1769-70National Gallery of Ireland

11. Anna Williams by Frances ReynoldsDr. Johnson House, Gough Square, London

12. Francis Barber, attributed to Sir Joshua ReynoldsDr. Johnson House, Gough Square

13. Blinking Sam by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1775Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California

14. James Boswell by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1785National Portrait Gallery

15. Hester Thrale Piozzi, drawing by George Dance, 1793National Portrait Gallery

16. Fanny Burney by Edward BurneyNational Portrait Gallery

CHAPTER TWO, p. 32: Main gate and tower, Pembroke College, Oxford UniversityValerie Meyers

CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 159: Johnsons House, 17 Gough Square, off Fleet Street, LondonValerie Meyers

CHAPTER NINE, p. 194: John Taylor by John Opie, c.1780Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum

I have used four sources of new material on Johnson: the James Clifford archive, the Donald Greene archive, the Rothschild collection and the Hyde collection. James Clifford did not live to write the third and final volume of his life of Johnson. I am grateful to Columbia University for information from his vast archive. Cliffords pupil Donald Greene, the greatest Johnson scholar of the twentieth century, also planned to write the life of Johnson. Greenes son, Richard, kindly sent me his fathers archive and allowed me to study it at home. Loren and Frances Rothschild, with characteristic generosity, invited me to stay with them in Los Angeles while reading their superb collection of Johnson books, letters and manuscripts. I have studied the great Donald and Mary Hyde collection, which was made available to scholars at Harvard University in June 2006. These archives provided many illuminating yet unpublished contemporary descriptions of Johnson.

I was also able to use Bruce Redfords complete, five-volume edition of Johnsons Letters (1992-94) and Roger Lonsdales superb four-volume edition of The Lives of the Poets (2006). I am grateful to Lynda Mugglestone and Lucie Walker for help during my research at Pembroke College, Oxford, and to the curators of the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum in Lichfield and Dr. Johnsons House in Gough Square, London. Mary and Howard Berg in Cambridge and Liz Hodgkin in the Cotswolds provided splendid hospitality.

I wrote my first dissertation and first three articles on Johnson, who has remained a lifelong interest. Ive profited from friendships with several distinguished Johnsonians who helped illuminate the complexities of his character. I knew John Wain in London and Oxford when he was writing his biography of Johnson (1974). I learned a great deal from stimulating conversations with my friend Dr. Bernard Meyer, who wrote several incisive psychoanalytical essays on Johnson. Morris Brownell, my classmate in graduate school at Berkeley, offered decades of valuable advice and encouragement. Paul Alkon gave me many books on Johnson and the eighteenth century, and sharpened my ideas in our talks.

Other friends also gave crucial help with this book: John Abbott, Katherine Bucknell, Robert DeMaria, Trevor Howard-Hill and William Pritchard answered queries. Gerald Caplan advised me about the law, Nora Crook about Frank Barber in Jamaica, Christian Kopff about Roman history, Francis Martin about private collections and Martin Postle about Reynolds paintings. Beryl Bainbridge discussed her novel about Queeney Thrale; Keith Crook lent me his dissertation on Johnson; John Burke sent me his book. Emma Butterfield of the National Portrait Gallery was particularly helpful with the photographs. My wife, Valerieborn a few miles from Lichfieldhelped with the research in England and America, and compiled the index. She, Paul Alkon and Frederick Crews read and improved each chapter.

No species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography, since none can be more delightful or more useful, none can more certainly enchain the heart by irresistible interest, or more widely diffuse instruction to every diversity of condition.

SAMUEL JOHNSON, RAMBLER 60

INTRODUCTION THE STRUGGLE

Samuel Johnsonmoralist, poet, essayist, critic, dictionary maker, conversationalist and larger-than-life personalityhad a formidable intellect and a passion for ideas. A man of humble background, he used his great mind and dominant character to overcome his physical defects, complete ambitious literary projects, and gain acceptance and honors. He also had a compassionate heart and a heroic capacity for suffering. He endured constant pain, long years of profound depression and two decades of failure. Ford Madox Ford called him the most tragic of all our major literary figures.