Dinner with Joseph Johnson

Hay’s meticulously researched biography, rich in period and personal detail, sheds light on both Johnson and the vibrant cultural world he inhabited – Hannah Beckerman * Guardian *
[A] compelling and magnificent study… Dinner with Joseph Johnson is an admirable achievement of biography and humanistic imagination – Katheryn Sunderland * Times Literary Supplement *
Dinner with Joseph Johnson sheds much-needed light on a key figure in both the ideological and material context of the 18th century… Hay’s meticulous research brings this “paper age” to life… Evokes the noise and excitement of an age characterised by the unceasing hum of literary debate… a fitting reflection of the period that Hay describes: a time when the written word could make someone’s name - or cost them their liberty * Financial Times *
This delightful book by the English literature professor Daisy Hay gives the reader the feeling of being at a rather elevated party… Johnson’s guests talked, wrote and painted about democracy, human rights, atheism, feminism, anatomy, chemistry and electricity. While dreaming of a better future, they befriended each other, loved each other and criticised each other… shaped an era… Johnson was a brilliant talent spotter and supported the best minds of his day – Emma Duncan * The Times *
A portrait of literary ferment… Daisy Hay’s compendious and impressive survey illuminates the contribution to these significant ideological shifts of the ill-assorted men and women whose kinship was marked by their shared participation in Joseph Johnson’s hospitality * Daily Telegraph *
Hay makes the most of a vivid period in English and especially London history. Her carefully poised study puts Johnson, today an obscure figure, back at the centre of his circle – Rosemary Hill * London Review of Books *
A beautifully packaged, skilfully written and detailed book that finally gives this gentle revolutionary the recognition he deserves – Jacqueline Riding * Country Life *
Chronicling Johnson’s fascinating dining companions and the changes that rocked Britain during the period, this is a feast for those interested in the 18th century * BBC History Magazine *
Marvellous… The list of [Joseph Johnson’s] guests reads like a who’s who revolutionary politics and culture: abolitionist MPs, Jacobin agents, pioneering scientists and radical preachers… Panoramic and kaleidoscopic * History Today *
It makes little sense to approach a character of such extensive and various connections as the bookseller and publisher Joseph Johnson other than via the clubbable sort of method at which Daisy Hay has already proven herself adept… In Dinner with Joseph Johnson, she has again broadened her scope… Hay pursues lines of enquiry with patience and sensitivity to detail – Freya Johnston * Literary Review *

Daisy Hay is an award-winning biographer whose previous work includes Young Romantics- The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives and Mr and Mrs Disraeli- A Strange Romance. She began her writing career as a doctoral student and then a Bye-Fellow at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge before moving to Oxford where she held the Alistair Horne Fellowship at St Antony’s College and a Visiting Scholarship at the Oxford Centre for Life Writing at Wolfson College. She has also held a Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard. In 2016 she was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize by the Leverhulme Trust and in 2018 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is currently Associate Professor in English Literature and Life Writing at the University of Exeter and lives in Devon with her family.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.