A fascinating portrait of a radical age through the writers associated with a London publisher and bookseller -- from William Wordsworth and Mary Wollstonecraft to Benjamin Franklin

Once a week, in late eighteenth-century London, writers of contrasting politics and personalities gathered around a dining table. The veal and boiled vegetables may have been unappetising but the company was convivial and the conversation brilliant and unpredictable. The host was Joseph Johnson, publisher and bookseller: a man at the heart of literary life. In this book, Daisy Hay paints a remarkable portrait of a revolutionary age through the connected stories of the men and women who wrote it into being, and whose ideas still influence us today.

Johnson's years as a publisher, 1760 to 1809, witnessed profound political, social, cultural and religious changes -- from the American and French revolutions to birth of the Romantic age -- and many of his dinner guests and authors were at the center of events. The shifting constellation of extraordinary people at Johnson's table included William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Benjamin Franklin, the scientist Joseph Priestly and the Swiss artist Henry Fuseli, as well as a group of extraordinary women -- Mary Wollstonecraft, the novelist Maria Edgeworth, and the poet Anna Barbauld. These figures pioneered revolutions in science and medicine, proclaimed the rights of women and children and charted the evolution of Britain's relationship with America and Europe. As external forces conspired to silence their voices, Johnson made them heard by continuing to publish them, just as his table gave them refuge.

A rich work of biography and cultural history, Dinner with Joseph Johnson is an entertaining and enlightening story of a group of people who left an indelible mark on the modern age.

• We started tracking this book on September 26, 2022.
• This book was $31.16 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 25 times in the past 1,110 days.
• The current price of this book is $14.72 last checked 3 hours ago.
• This book is at its lowest price in the past 90 days.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $13.17.
• The lowest price to date was $13.17 last reached on April 2, 2025.
• This book has been $13.17 one time since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $31.16 last reached on September 26, 2022.
• This book has been $31.16 one time since we started tracking it.

• Literature & FictionLiterary CriticismMovements & PeriodsBy Century18th Century
• HistoryEuropeWesternUnited KingdomGeorgian Era (1714-1837)
• Literature & FictionLiterary CriticismRegionsEuropeanBritish & Irish

• Publication Date: November 15, 2022
• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 504 Pages
• File Size: 401 KB