Description

University of Iowa Press, Iowa City [Published date: 1979]. Hardcover, xix, 276 pp; 21 cm; No other printings listed. Illustrated with a frontispiece portrait of Joseph Johnson after Moses Haughton, seven additional black and white plates, and a reproduction of Horwood's 1799 London map as decorative endpapers. In good+ condition/ no dust jacket. Blue cloth covered boards with gold lettering and design on front and spine. Light overall scuffing, fading and soiling to covers. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. Not Ex-library. A scholarly biography of the pioneering British publisher Joseph Johnson (1738 - 1809). Traces Johnson's rise from Liverpool bookseller to influential London publisher, highlighting his liberal political affiliations, publication of controversial works by authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft, William Blake, Joseph Priestley, and William Godwin, and his 1795 trial and imprisonment for disseminating dissenting ideas. Tyson draws on extensive archival research to demonstrate Johnson's central role in late eighteenth-century intellectual and political life. Contents include Preface; Introduction; Beginnings: Liverpool and London (1738 - 70); No. 72 St. Paul's Churchyard: The First Decade (1770 - 79); Forming the Circle (1780 - 88); The French Revolution (1789 - 94); Trial and Imprisonment (1795 - 1800); The Final Years (1800 - 09); A Note on Writings about Johnson; Key to Frequently Cited References; Notes; Index.