“There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed.”
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The Samuel Johnson Society of the West (SJSW), founded in 1984 as the Samuel Johnson Society of Southern California, had its first program to commemorate the bicentenary of the death of Samuel Johnson. The program began the day after the anniversary of Johnson’s death at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library with talks, a luncheon, and an exhibition of Johnson manuscripts and books, followed the next day at the Huntington Library with additional talks, luncheon, and the viewing of an exhibition of Johnson manuscripts, books, and graphic images. That night, in the El Dorado Room at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the first of the annual dinners was held with John Wain, poet, novelist, critic, and biographer of Johnson, speaking on “Alternative Lives of Johnson.” A catalogue, Samuel Johnson (1709-1784): An Appreciation, compiled by Robert Allen, provided a record of the exhibitions at both the Clark and Huntington libraries. Since 1984 the friends of Johnson and his age have gathered annually to have a convivial dinner, hear a talk, and receive a keepsake. Esto perpetua.
Samuel Johnson by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1775)
The Samuel Johnson Society of the West is an affiliate society of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.
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Kate Chisholm, the author of Wits and Wives: Dr. Johnson in the Company of Women and Fanny Burney: Her Life will deliver the thirty-first Daniel G. Blum Memorial Lecture at the society’s annual meeting 11 October 2026. Ms. Chisholm has also published biographical essays on the Burney family (in The Cambridge Companion to Frances Burney) and Mary Wollstonecraft (in Mary Wollstonecraft in Context). Most recently, she edited Letters to Sophia: The Afterlives of Hester Thrale.
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