Once a week, in late eighteenth-century London, writers of contrasting politics and personalities gathered around a dining table. The host was Joseph Johnson, publisher and bookseller: a man at the heart of literary life. In this book, Daisy Hay paints a 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.
Hugely engrossing ... Hay’s book has its longueurs, and some of its literary judgments are mind-boggling ... For all that, Dinner with Joseph Johnson is an exciting blend of ideas and personalities.
This delightful book by the English literature professor Daisy Hay, who has also written biographies of the Romantics and the Disraelis, gives the reader the feeling of being at a rather elevated party.
Dinner With Joseph Johnson is more than a richly detailed character profile: It also comprises a sharply realized group portrait of those whom Johnson wined, dined and gave voice to ... At times Ms. Hay’s book feels episodic, jumping from one of Johnson’s writers to another. Readers might obtain a more complete portrait of some of these thinkers from a full-dress biography ... Ms. Hay excels, however, with her potted histories of less familiar figures.
