“There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed.”
Keepsakes
The Samuel Johnson Society of the West (SJSW) presents to each guest at the annual dinner meeting a keepsake derived from unpublished materials by or about Johnson and his circle or based on original research on Johnson and his age. Because of their ephemeral nature and their limited press runs in finely printed editions, keepsakes produced by the society attain the status of collectors’ items as well as contribute significantly to Johnsonian scholarship.
Recent keepsakes are:
Paroxysm Lost: Volatility and Evanescence in the Life of Johnson Manuscript (an exploration of Boswell’s manuscript revisions in facsimile to describe an outburst by Johnson against Bennet Langton on 16 May 1784, 2023).
Samuel Johnson by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1775)
"I stole his likeness:" Lady Anne Lindsay's Drawing of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, 1773 (facsimiles of hitherto unknown drawings of Johnson and Boswell by Lady Anne Lindsay and their history, 2022).
Prospectus Comprising the Preface to Volume I and Some Sample Entries for the Publication in Two Volumes of “A Descriptive Catalogue of the Loren & Frances Rothschild Library of Eighteenth-Century British Authors” (2019).
Johnson in Defense of Henry Thrale: The Aftermath of the Massacre in St. George’s Fields (a facsimile in Johnson’s hand of an address written for Henry Thrale in defense against the claim Thrale had signed an order for soldiers to quell a riot in Southwark, 2018).
“Lady B. Revised”: Annotations in the Huntington Library Copy of ‘Sir Charles Grandison’ (a facsimile of Lady Dorothy Bradshaigh’s notes and Samuel Richardson’s responses in Volume VII of the Huntington Library’s copy of Sir Charles Grandison, 2017).
Moses Thomas’s Proposals for the First American Edition of a Complete Johnson’s Dictionary (a facsimile of Moses Thomas’s proposal for publishing the first American edition of the Dictionary which included Johnson’s original preface and grammar, 2016).
The Amiable Clergyman & the Forgetful Patron: Robert Potter Writes to Elizabeth Montagu (a facsimile letter to Montagu from Potter which offers review comments on Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, 2014).
Three Samuel Johnson Portraits: Taylor’s Johnson, Lamborn’s Taylor, Mytton’s Lamborn (the first publication of a previously unknown lifetime drawing of Johnson, 2013).
The Keepsakes of the Johnsonian Societies of America: A Bibliography (which offers a complete listing of the society’s keepsakes, 2012).
Samuel Johnson: Literary Giant of the Eighteenth Century (a hardback catalogue of the major exhibition at the Huntington Library commemorating the tercentenary of Johnson’s birth, 2010-2011).
“To Drive the Night Along”: A Manuscript of Samuel Johnson’s Latin Translation of a Greek Epigram (a facsimile of one of the six known surviving translations of epigrams in Johnson’s hand, 2009).
Latest
Contact
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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