Hugely engrossing.

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.

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.

Compelling and magnificent study.

Descriptions of his relationships with Wollstonecraft and Cowper are perhaps the most successful parts of Daisy Hay’s book, but elsewhere it is under-researched and under-written.

Illuminating account.