The Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson or the Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. During the Last Twenty Years of His Life by Hester Thrale

Hester Thrale

Hester Lynch Thrale was a British diarist, author, and patron of the arts. Her diaries and correspondence are an important source of information about Samuel Johnson and 18th-century life.-Biography:Thrale was born at Bodvel Hall, Caernarvonshire, Wales...

, also known as Hester Lynch Piozzi, was first published 26 March 1786. It was based on the various notes and anecdotes of Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

 that Thrale kept in her Thraliana

Thraliana

The Thraliana was a diary kept by Hester Thrale and is part of the genre known as table talk. Although the work began as Thrale's diary focused on her experience with her family, it slowly changed focus to emphasise various anecdotes and stories about the life of Samuel Johnson...

. Thrale wrote the work in Italy while she lived there for three years after marrying Gabriel Piozzi.

Background

Before Thrale began to write the Thraliana, she kept two sets of anecdotes: the first was devoted to Samuel Johnson and the other for miscellaneous events. She relied on these, along with her memory, to write the early portions of her work.

After Johnson's death, Thrale decided to publish a series of anecdotes of Johnson's life based on the various notes and anecdotes, called Johnsoniana by her friends, that she incorporated into her Thraliana. She was eager to start publishing her writings, and Johnson's death gave her the opportunity. Thrale wrote the work in Italy while she lived there for three years after marrying Gabriel Piozzi.

The work was first published 26 March 1786. In 1815, Thrale claimed:

"At Rome we received letters saying the book was bought with such avidity, that Cadell hadnot one copy left when the King sent for it at ten o'clock at night, and he was forced to be one from a friend to supply his Majesty's impatience, who sate up all night reading it. I received (pound symbol)300, a sum unexampled in those days for so small a volume."

The Gentleman's Magazine of March 1786 said "On the third morning after the book was published not a copy of it could be obtained". The book went into four editions during 1786.

Anecdotes

Thrale began her work by stating in the Preface:

"I have somewhere heard of read, that the Preface before a book, like the portico before a house, should be contrived, so as to catch, but not detain the attention of those who desire admission to the family within, or leave to look over the collection of pictures made by one whose opportunities of obtaining them we know to have been not unfrequent. I wish not to keep my readers long from such intimacy with the manners of Dr. Johnson, or such knowledge of his sentiments as these pages can convey. To urge my distance from England as an excuse for the book's being ill written, would be ridiculous; it might indeed serve as a just reason for my having written it at all; because, though others may print the same aphorisms and stories, I cannot here be sure that they have done so....

I am aware that many will say, I have not spoken highly enough of Dr. Johnson; but it will be difficult for those who say so, to speak more highly, If I have described his manners as they were, I have been careful to shew his superiority to the common forms of common life....

When I have said, that he was more a man of genius than of learning, I mean not to take from the one part of his character that which I willingly give to the other. The erudition of Mr. Johnson proved his genius; for he had not acquired it by long or profound study....

But I must conclude my Preface, and begin my book, the first I ever presented before the Public; from whose awful appearance in some measure to defend and conceal myself.... Studious however to avoid offending, and careful of that offence which can be taken without a cause, I here not unwillingly submit my slight performance to the decision of that glorious country, which I have the daily delight to hear applauded in others, as eminently just, generous, and humane.

Critical response

Horace Walpole quickly responded to the work in a letter 28 March 1786:

"Two days ago appeared Madame Piozzi's Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson. I am lamentably disappointed - in her, I mean; not in him. I had conceived a favourable opinion of her capacity. But this new book is wretched; a high-varnished preface to a heap of rubbish, in a very vulgar style, and too void of method even for such a farrago."

On 30 April 1786 he followed with another:

"As she must have heard that the whole first impression was sold the first day, no doubt she expects, on her landing to be received like the Governor of Gibraltar, and to find the road strewed with branches of palm. She, and Boswell, and their Hero are the joke of the public."

Edmond Malone

Edmond Malone

Edmond Malone was an Irish Shakespearean scholar and editor of the works of William Shakespeare.Assured of an income after the death of his father in 1774, Malone was able to give up his law practice for at first political and then more congenial literary pursuits. He went to London, where he...

said, "On the whole the public is indebted to her for her lively, though very inaccurate and artful account of Dr. Johnson". James Clifford declared that the Anecdotes and the Thraliana "established her reputation as a bluestocking writer of the late eighteenth century". Martine Brownley claims that the Anecdotes "have long pleased Johnsonians", but her "lasting literary fame is due to her diaries and letters".