The Age of Johnson

Dedicated to publishing the best scholarship on Johnson and the long eighteenth century, The Age of Johnson has carved out a unique place for itself. The unusual amount of space allowed enables contributors to address in depth every facet of Johnson’s work and life from his prayers to his politics (while not ignoring the wider aspects of the age) and the extensive review articles consistently engage with their subject matter at a level which is not possible elsewhere. Michael Bundock, author of The Fortunes of Francis Barber: The True Story of the Jamaican Slave Who Became Samuel Joh

The era that included Johnson and the epoch that Johnson defined: Both versions of The Age of Johnson merge, mingle, and happily marry in the long-awaited revival of Jack Lynch’s and John Scanlan’s acclaimed journal. Much as 'Dr. Johnson' refracts human experience through the zoom lens of biography, so this first volume from Bucknell University Press peers at the glorious spectrum of eighteenth-century culture through prismatic particularities. Readers of The Age of Johnson will watch with joy and amazement as able authors extract vibrant insights from such gems in the Enlightenment lode as Johnson’s notes to Shakespeare or Hester Piozzi’s verse annotations or even a few dusty portraits of John Milton hanging in a corner of 'the Great Cham’s' powder room. Past, present, singular, and universal converge in inventive studies of Johnson’s place on twentieth-century reading lists, of penal reform, and of Enlightenment notions concerning the identity of epic poet Homer. Johnson recommends that learners scan the world from China to Peru—from Lima to Lisbon and on to Beijing—but Johnson is here outdone by a truly global journal that even includes comments on Pacific explorer James Cook. Energized by snappy reviews and enriched by diligently full-length review essays, the newly upgraded Age of Johnson delivers lively, precise, and, above all, pioneering scholarship. It brings out the best in that select cadre of writers, thinkers, and occasionally even landscapers who, year after year and century after century, refresh and redefine the English Enlightenment. Kevin L. Cope, editor of 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

AJ has been missing from the academic scene for far too long. Here’s to our earnest hope and expectation that the hiatus of the past years is now permanently bridged, and that we may expect from editors Lynch and Scanlan, their publishers, and their future contributors, the thorough, steady, and stable emission of volumes on a regular and timely basis, one volume per year. Johnsonians deserve nothing less, nor does Johnson. AJ, welcome back. It’s good to see you again. 18th Century Intelligencer