Acknowledgments

My greatest debt is to Pam Smallwood, who read through the whole manuscript and made many very helpful, and necessary, suggestions. The constructive advice of the two anonymous Cambridge University Press reviewers has helped me unify my material, while I am grateful to Bethany Thomas, Senior Commissioning Editor at Cambridge University Press, and to George Paul Laver of the production team, who have assisted me in seeing this project through to conclusion. In reexamining Johnson’s criticism, I have incurred further obligations to friends, editors, readers, teachers, collaborators and colleagues within and without academic institutions at home and abroad. Those who are spared will be unaware how much I owe to them. Of those who are not, I dedicate this study to their memory. I especially honor the memory of Dr. Tom Mason, lately of Bristol University, in whose company, until his death in September 2022, I have enjoyed many rewarding conversations about criticism and Johnson. Other debts I record in the notes to each chapter.

Versions of chapters in this book have first appeared in the following publications. I am grateful to the editors and presses for their permission to reproduce, revise and adapt copyright material, and to the poet David Ferry, who has kindly permitted me to reproduce complete two of his poems and to quote an extract from a third:

• Chapter 1, “Johnson’s Compassion”: the Richard Thrale Memorial Lecture, December 8, 2018, first appearing in The New Rambler: Journal of the Johnson Society of London (2018–19), ed. Catherine Dille, pp. 35–53. Copyright © Contributors and the Johnson Society of London.

• Chapter 2, “‘The tears stand in my eyes’: Johnson and Emotion”: derived from “Emotion” in The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Johnson, ed. Jack Lynch (Oxford University Press, © 2022 Oxford University Press), pp. 601–17. Adapted and reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press.

• Chapter 3, “Petty Caviller or ‘Formidable Assailant’: Johnson Reads Dennis”: The Cambridge Quarterly, vol. 46, no. 4 (December 2017), 305–24. Copyright © 2017 Oxford University Press. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press via Rightslink, License no. 5390871249242.

• Chapter 4, “Readers Curious and Common: Johnson, Thomas Warton and Historical Form”: derived from “Histories,” in The Oxford Handbook of British Poetry, 1660–1800, ed. Jack Lynch (Oxford University Press, © 2016 Oxford University Press), pp. 701–15. Adapted and reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press.

• Chapter 5, “Shakespeare, Johnson and Philosophy”: adapted from “Shakespeare and Philosophy,” in Shakespeare and the Eighteenth Century, ed. Peter Sabor and Fiona Ritchie (Cambridge University Press, © 2012 Cambridge University Press), pp. 331–48. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.

• Chapter 6, “Two Ways of Being Wise: Johnson, Philosophy and Montaigne”: derived from a longer essay of the same title in Poetica (Tokyo), vol. 84 (2015, special issue), 55–76. Adapted and reproduced by permission. © Maruzen-Yushodo Co., Ltd.

• Chapter 7, “Johnson and Time”: Samuel Johnson: The Arc of the Pendulum, ed. Freya Johnston and Lynda Mugglestone (Oxford University Press, © 2013 Oxford University Press), pp. 11–23. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press.

• Chapter 8, “Truth, Fiction and ‘Undisputed History’”: derived from “Johnson on Truth, Fiction and ‘Undisputed History,’” in The Ways of Fiction in the Eighteenth Century: New Essays on the Literary Cultures of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Nicholas J. Crowe (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018), pp. 198–212. Copyright © Nicholas J. Crowe and contributors. Published with the permission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

• Chapter 9, “Annotated Immortality”: derived partially from my review essay “Annotated Immortality: Lonsdale’s Johnson,” Eighteenth-Century Life, vol. 31, no. 3 (2007), 76–84. Copyright © 2007, Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Republished by permission of the publisher, www.dukeupress.edu. Other parts of the chapter are adapted from “Definitively Johnson? The Yale Lives of the Poets,” The New Rambler: Journal of the Johnson Society of London (2010–11), ed. Christine Rees, pp. 81–90. Copyright © Contributors and the Johnson Society of London.