Dinner with Joseph Johnson: Books and Friendship in a Revolutionary Age by Daisy Hay
Daisy Hay’s new book is hugely engrossing, yet its hero, Joseph Johnson, is almost unknown today. He was a bookseller and publisher with a shop at 72, St Paul’s Churchyard, London, where in the tumultuous years before and after the French Revolution he gave weekly dinners to an assortment of writers and thinkers.
The fare was ample but not luxurious, typically a fish and meat course with boiled vegetables followed by rice pudding. Authors down on their luck were glad of a meal, but what attracted most of the guests was not the food but the brilliance of the talk. As if to stimulate their imaginations, a painting called The Nightmare by Johnson’s friend Henry Fuseli dominated the room, showing an incubus leering over a sleeping woman.
