Dr Phil Jones – Reading Dr Johnson: Johnson among the Writers

Rambunctious, opinionated, Dr Johnson, Lichfield’s greatest writer, never knowingly undersold himself. But what did later writers think of him? The nineteenth-century essayist, William Hazlitt, thought him pompous: ‘the author is always upon stilts’. By contrast, Samuel Beckett, author of Waiting for Godot, paid homage to a writer he considered a genius, by visiting Johnson’s Birthplace in Lichfield, but, characteristically, did not sign the visitor book.  

Later authors, including Thomas Carlyle and T. S. Eliot, admired Johnson but re-wrote him as versions of themselves. Johnson’s life also fascinated writers, such as James Boswell, Mrs Thrale and Frances Burney. The most famous biography of Johnson, Boswell’s Life, however, became hostage to feuding editors, so much so, that in the 1870s, Percy Fitzgerald argued that the footnotes of rival editor, George Birkbeck Hill, ‘whelm and submerge poor Boswell’. Dr Phil Jones examines in this entertaining book how Johnson’s legacy has been fought over, mis-represented and re-interpreted over the last 220 years.  

Dr Phil Jones is a local author, and the Chairman of The Johnson Society (Lichfield). He has written widely on Johnson and the eighteenth century.

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