Books are available at Goerings Books and Bagels.

The Age of Johnson was a period of clubs, salons, and coffee houses, a time when many people recognized a distinction between mere talk and true conversation. It was also an age when intellectual specialization had yet to eliminate many subjects from general discourse, so that any intelligent reader expected to pay attention to new developments in everything from astronomy to theatre, from art to politics, from ancient bards to modern optics. By birth and upbringing, Samuel Johnson was a nobody, not even a university graduate or a person with illustrious ancestors (his doctorate was honorary and his father was a bankrupt bookseller). He wrote only a handful of poems, one novel, and one (unsuccessful) play. But he was the most influential man of letters of his age, and one of the few writers ever to have a literary period named after him.

The reason is the enormous breadth of his sympathy, understanding, and output. These same qualities made him the center of group of literary friends, the so-called “Club,” that included most of the great male writers who were alive and in London in the period 1737–1784. They also inspired him to welcome, praise, and mentor a large group of the best female writers of the same era. The writers of both genders included not only those who worked in belletristic genres, but those who wrote nonfiction – everything from history and biography to treatises on navigation, law, theology, politics, and criticism and history of art, music, and literature.

In this course, then, we will read samples of the writings of Johnson and his friends – and a few enemies – in a wide variety of modes, including many not conventionally considered “literary.” Each member of the class will undertake primary responsibility for one writer from Johnson’s “circle,” though we will all sample each of the chosen writers, and everyone will read a variety of Johnson’s own works. We will then try to emulate the Club, to talk about the issues raised by the writings assigned for each work with attention to the variety of perspectives the different authors we have chosen would have on the different works read. Perhaps we can revive the art of intelligent, informed, and energetic conversation, “literary” in the broadest sense. We will not, however, leave the ladies to the salon and the gentleman to the clubs.

Each person will write two 20–25 minute “conference papers” for the course, one that focuses on Johnson in some way, and one that focuses on another writer of the period.  These papers will be given orally but turned in with appropriate documentation in a final draft.  Each will count 30%.  The other responsibilities of class members will include a 500-700-word book review (any book relevent to the course published in this millennium), introduction of one writer other than Johnson himself to the rest of the class (recommending an article on that person to the rest of the class), class participation, including pre-class emails to all with a comment or question about the week's readings, and  leading class discussion on one occasion.

Reading assignments will include a portion of Boswell's Life of Johnson every week, but we will generally not discuss the Life except on the first meeting of the  course and the last.  For nearly every week, except the "professional conference" weeks,  we will read something by Johnson and something by someone else.  The poets in our anthology will sometimes be supplemented by online materials or handouts.  The following schedule is subject to change.

Jan 5 Introduction: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson  to 1738; London
     12 Life of Savage; Thomson, Gray, Collins in Anthology; Life to 1747
      19 Dictionary; Letter to Chesterfield, Burke’s Letter to a Noble Lord, On the Sublime and the Beautiful; Life to 1757
      26    Vanity of Human Wishes; Smart, Cowper; Life to 1767
 Feb 2 Rambler, Idler; Piozzi Anecdotes, Life to 1773
        9 Life to 1776; Rasselas, Duck, Collier, Mary Jones, Mary Leapor, Johnson’s To Dr. Levet
       16 Life to 1777;  Review of Solmes Jenyns;  Burney’s Letters and Diaries
       23    Conference; first conference paper in oral form
March 2 Spring Break
    Mar 9 Life to 1778; Johnson on Shakespeare; Akenside, Mary Robinson; please turn in final draft of first conference paper
      16 Life to 1779; playwrights Goldsmith, Sheridan; Johnson’s Irene excerpt, “On Drury Lane”
      23 Life to1781; Journey to the Western Islands;  Boswell's London Journal
      30 Life to 1782; Lives of the Poets; Gibbon's Autobiography and Chapters I, IV, and the first 8 paragraphs of Chapter XV of the Decline and Fall, all available on my website http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/pcraddoc/dfgib
April 6 Life to 1784; Lives of the Poets; Crabbe, Seward, Barbauld
13    Complete Life; begin Conference; second conference paper in oral form
20    Conference; retrospect
25   (Not a class day) Last day to turn in final drafts.