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.
What The Reviewers Say
John Carey,
The Times (UK)
Hugely engrossing.
Emma Duncan,
The Times (UK)
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..
Malcolm Forbes,
The Wall Street Journal
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.
Rosemary Hill,
London Review of Books (UK)
Hay makes the most of a vivid period in English and especially London history. Her carefully poised study puts Johnson, today an obscure figure, back at the centre of his circle.