Dinner with Joseph Johnson

A portrait of literary ferment... Daisy Hay's compendious and impressive survey illuminates the contribution to these significant ideological shifts of the ill-assorted men and women whose kinship was marked by their shared participation in Joseph Johnson's hospitality

Daily Telegraph

Marvellous... The list of [Joseph Johnson's] guests reads like a who's who revolutionary politics and culture: abolitionist MPs, Jacobin agents, pioneering scientists and radical preachers... Panoramic and kaleidoscopic

History Today

This delightful book by the English literature professor Daisy Hay gives the reader the feeling of being at a rather elevated party... Johnson's guests talked, wrote and painted about democracy, human rights, atheism, feminism, anatomy, chemistry and electricity. While dreaming of a better future, they befriended each other, loved each other and criticised each other... shaped an era... Johnson was a brilliant talent spotter and supported the best minds of his day

Emma Duncan, The Times

Hay makes the most of a vivid period in English and especially London history. Her carefully poised study puts Johnson, today an obscure figure, back at the centre of his circle

Rosemary Hill, London Review of Books

It makes little sense to approach a character of such extensive and various connections as the bookseller and publisher Joseph Johnson other than via the clubbable sort of method at which Daisy Hay has already proven herself adept... In Dinner with Joseph Johnson, she has again broadened her scope... Hay pursues lines of enquiry with patience and sensitivity to detail

Freya Johnston, Literary Review

A beautifully packaged, skilfully written and detailed book that finally gives this gentle revolutionary the recognition he deserves

Jacqueline Riding, Country Life

Dinner with Joseph Johnson sheds much-needed light on a key figure in both the ideological and material context of the 18th century... Hay's meticulous research brings this "paper age" to life... Evokes the noise and excitement of an age characterised by the unceasing hum of literary debate... a fitting reflection of the period that Hay describes: a time when the written word could make someone's name - or cost them their liberty

Financial Times

Hay's meticulously researched biography, rich in period and personal detail, sheds light on both Johnson and the vibrant cultural world he inhabited

Hannah Beckerman, Guardian

Chronicling Johnson's fascinating dining companions and the changes that rocked Britain during the period, this is a feast for those interested in the 18th century

BBC History Magazine

[A] compelling and magnificent study... Dinner with Joseph Johnson is an admirable achievement of biography and humanistic imagination

Katheryn Sunderland, Times Literary Supplement