Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading

by Robert DeMaria Jr.

If readers of the twentieth century feel overwhelmed by the proliferation of writing and information, they can find in Samuel Johnson a sympathetic companion. Johnson's career coincided with the rapid expansion of publishing in England--not only in English, but in Latin and Greek; not only in books, but in reviews, journals, broadsides, pamphlets, and books about books. In 1753 Johnson imagined a time when "writers will, perhaps, be multiplied, till no readers will be found." Three years later, he wrote that England had become "a nation of authors" in which "every man must be content to read his book to himself." In Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading, Robert DeMaria considers the surprising influence of one of the greatest readers in English literature. Johnson's relationship to books not only reveals much about his life and times, DeMaria contends, but also provides a dramatic counterpoint to modern reading habits. As a superior practitioner of the craft, Johnson provides a compelling model for how to read--indeed, he provides different models for different kinds of reading. DeMaria shows how Johnson recognized early that not all reading was alike--some requiring intense concentration, some suited for cursory glances, some requiring silence, some best appreciated amid the chatter of a coffeehouse. Considering the remarkable range of Johnson's reading, DeMaria discovers in one extraordinary career a synoptic view of the subject of reading.

Genres: Books About Books

288 pages, Hardcover

First published April 16, 1997

About the author

Robert DeMaria, Jr. is the Henry Noble MacCracken Professor of English at Vassar College. His main area of study is eighteenth-century British Literature and, in particular, Samuel Johnson.

Reviews

[David Jacobson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has an interesting premise: through a close inspection of the reading habits of one of history's great readers, we can gain general insight into different styles of reading and how those styles impact one's intellectual life. The author of this work identifies four such styles from the life of Samuel Johnson: study (or hard reading), perusal (reading for specific knowledge), mere reading (drinking from the steady stream of news and comment), and curious reading (essentially reading for empty fun). Each style is illustrated through books that Dr. Johnson read; although, these illustrations often veer into lengthy summaries of specific 18th Century works. By focusing so much on specific works, the styles of reading become overly identified with specific subject matter and the boundaries between styles become uselessly blurred.

The discussion of Johnson's reading does make one realize how different his intellectual world was from ours. His reading in the style of study was almost entirely of the Greek and Latin texts that were then-canonical but now-unread for many reasons: the declining authority of the ancients, the abandonment of gentlemanly language study, and the collapse of the very idea of a canon.

The author concludes with a chapter of general comments on the future of reading (from the vista of 1997). One of his comments is prescient: he asks what it might mean for American society if every person has their own electronic newspaper delivered to them, with its own narrow focus and biases. But, his forward-looking view is overly focused on the potential impact of hypertext. Now that we live in the future, we see that the non-linear style of reading enabled by hyperlinks has not been nearly as transformative as the now-algorithmic siloing alluded to in the newspaper comment, not to mention the recent explosion of video.