“There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed.”
Blum Lectures
The Daniel G. Blum Lectures are named in honor of one of the founding directors of the Society—an enthusiastic supporter of all matters Johnsonian. The Blum Lecture is given at each annual meeting. The lectures have been by leading Johnson scholars, collectors of Johnsoniana, and actors with an interest in the period. The titles of past Daniel G. Blum lectures exemplify the broad range of topics that is stimulated by the study of Samuel Johnson and his circle. The list of lecturers and titles includes:
2023: Bryan A. Garner, “Just Deserts: Evaluating Johnson as a Lexicographer”
2022: Freya Johnston, “The Books Johnson Did Not Write”
Samuel Johnson by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1775)
2019: Loren Rothschild, “Collecting Samuel Johnson and His Circle”
2018: Claudia L. Johnson, “Hard Reading:Austen (and Johnson)”
2017: Jack Lynch, “Johnson Goes to War”
2016: Stuart Sherman, "Growing Old with Samuel Johnson"
2015: Margaret Anne Doody, " 'Promise, large promise': Samuel Johnson and the Necessary Enjoymentof Emotion and Delusion"
2014: James Engell, “Johnson, Honestly: His Anatomy of the Lie”
2013: Richard Fancy, “The Actor and the Editor”
2012: Nicholas Hudson, “The Challenge of Writing Johnson’s Biography”
2011: Thomas Kaminski, “Making History: Johnson’s Parliamentary Reporting for the Gentleman’sMagazine”
2010: James G. Basker, “When a Man Is Tired of London . . . He Goes to Oxford? Johnson’s Second Life in the City of Dreaming Spires”
2009: John W. Byrne, “A Shadowy Presence: Samuel Johnson in Australia”
2008: Michael Bundock, “Johnson’s London: London’s Johnson”
2007: Gerald Goldberg, “Samuel Johnson and His Circle: The Goldberg Collection”
2006: Paul T. Ruxin, “Dorando and the Douglas Cause”
2005: Ian Simpson Ross, “Ursa MajorinPartibus Fidelium ”
2004: Peter Sabor, “United in One Performance: Samuel Johnson and Fanny Burney”
2003: Richard Wendorf, “Samuel Johnson Abandons the Capital”
2002: Jeffrey Meyers, “Johnson’s Lives of the Poets and Modern Biography” (joint meeting with the Johnsonians)
2001: Martin C. Battestin, “Dr. Johnson and the Case of Harry Fielding”
2000: Kenneth Tigar, “I Must Be Mr. Boswell”
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Greg Clingham, Visiting Research Professor, Pennsylvania State University Humanities Institute, and Professor Emeritus Bucknell University, will present the twenty-ninth Daniel G. Blum Lecture at the annual meeting 24 November 2024. Prof. Clingham is the author of Johnson, Writing and Memory and editor of The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson. At Bucknell University, Prof. Clingham held the John P. Crozer Chair of English Literature and served as the director of Bucknell University Press.
Myron Yeager, Secretary
yeager@chapman.edu
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