Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was a really cool guy, actually

Samuel Johnson fan-blog.

[my-deer-friend]

Dissertation word count: 18,758/15,000 Me: Yikes! Time to do some cutting and editing. [four hours later] Dissertation word count: 19,143/15,000

[my-deer-friend]

[ten days of blood, sweat, tears, gnashing of teeth, rending of clothes etc etc later] Dissertation word count: 17,690/15,000

[my-deer-friend]

Good news: My draft is complete!

Bad news: I need to cut 1,231 absolutely essential load-bearing words to hit my word limit.

[my-deer-friend]

She's done. 14 words under the maximum word count.

But Deer! Aren't there 8k words in your footno– [gunshots]

[rslashrats]

making up characters is so fun because you can be like “this is johnson he came from my mind” and all your friends will go “yippe!!! horray!!! we love johnson!!!”

[rslashrats]

very unfortunate but hilarious side effect of calling the example oc johnson in this post is now people are saying this in the tags

[yellowbelliedtoad]

Sigh. I cannot count how many times the search "Johnson Dictionary" has given me this misinterpretation.

[dreaminterlude]

we’re never making it out of the labyrinth

[yellowbelliedtoad]

I think there's something in Rasselas about this.

[clove-pinks]

Long 18th century vs. Long 19th century: winner gets to claim the Napoleonic Era and the 1790s.

[my-deer-friend]

Oh, friend, you consider those a prize? Bah. You can have Napoleon, and the 1790s are on thin ice too.

I propose that the long 18th century grows backwards to subsume the 1660s instead. The real victory in century-based expansionism is getting to claim arch-gossip Samuel Pepys.

[yellowbelliedtoad]

I feel that this is the time to say that, though I know there can be a long, long, academic discussion as what counts as modern, I've always used Samuel Johnson as a marker between whatever age the Baroque is, and whatever age the Early Modern is. Johnson dies in 1784: bam, we're in the modern world. I'm not too familiar with this "Long 19th Century," even less the "Long 18th Century," but I still humbly propose the "Johnson's Corpse" model.

[yellowbelliedtoad]

I'm finishing up a paper that I should have written a long time ago, supporting myself by far too many cups of tea and lemonade. This is the Samuel Johnson way.

[aynrandbussycrusher]

hi, you've reached the marriam Webster hotline. marriam Webster is not in right now.

if you'd like the definition of aardvark press 1

if youd like the definition of aardwolf press 2

[teamhawkeye]

We put glow collars on the dogs when we walk them at night, and it is Extremely™️ effective on Boswell

[yellowbelliedtoad]

Our scientific word for beetles, "Coleoptera," comes from the Greek koleos, for "sheath," and ptera, "wing." I'm not exactly sure who popularized this in English, but be glad it was not Samuel Johnson. He had the same idea, with the words for "sheath," and "wing." This is all the same! Unfortunately, he used Latin.

[yellowbelliedtoad]

His definition of ladybug/ladybird also shows up with this term.

[yellowbelliedtoad]

Our scientific word for beetles, "Coleoptera," comes from the Greek koleos, for "sheath," and ptera, "wing." I'm not exactly sure who popularized this in English, but be glad it was not Samuel Johnson. He had the same idea, with the words for "sheath," and "wing." This is all the same! Unfortunately, he used Latin.

[yellowbelliedtoad]

Good news: I got accepted into a program that teaches around two years of university Latin! As someone who has been working on quite literally the Latin poems of Johnson, it's mortifying to admit that I actually don't know Latin. So, I'm really glad to finally have this opportunity.

Bad news: it is two years of Latin, condensed into ten weeks. This dead language will come easy to me because I might actually be dead by the end of it.

[yellowbelliedtoad]

I come armed with a fluency in Johnsonese, atrociously accented Spanglish, and a Roman Republic professor (who took this same program many decades ago) who says that I have good historical instinct. Let's see how far I can make it.

[yellowbelliedtoad]

Good news: I got accepted into a program that teaches around two years of university Latin! As someone who has been working on quite literally the Latin poems of Johnson, it's mortifying to admit that I actually don't know Latin. So, I'm really glad to finally have this opportunity.

Bad news: it is two years of Latin, condensed into ten weeks. This dead language will come easy to me because I might actually be dead by the end of it.

[fsawt]

head empty only the image of 4yo sammy j snapping his head around and scrambling after a servant and beating her for emasculating him (the toddler) by just standing there in broad fucking daylight

[yellowbelliedtoad]

Honestly I love that James Boswell had such an idea of Johnson's robust masculinity that he included that line that it's about manliness. The toddler. The toddler not wanting to be watched by his guardians. Manlily.

[yellowbelliedtoad]

I'm currently working with this novel for a paper, but I want to show you all the single best book review out there:

"Who the hell is Samuel Johnson?!?"

[yellowbelliedtoad]

Went to a cool Antiquarian Book Fair yesterday! Saw a bunch of cool volumes, including an entire shelf of first-edition Johnsoniana, which almost made me tear up (crying wise. Not page-ripping wise). Even met a mutual friend of some people I know from the Johnson Societies, and we chatted for a while. Left a friend to her own devices while I read one of these first editions cover-to-cover.

However, I think the best interaction was one representative of the local rare books room seeing me from across the room, pointing and just saying, "You!", very accusingly. (I'm the person who constantly requests to see the Dictionary.)

[yellowbelliedtoad]

The one thing I could afford:

Old Goldsmith postcard! And bonus catalogue of all the cool Samuel Johnson books I'll never be able to own. Alas alas.

@fsawt , I thought of you.

[fsawt]

HIM!!!

[yellowbelliedtoad]

I should add, when speaking to the vendor seeking the post cards, I expressed a sadness that they didn't have any for Johnson, "But that's alright, I already have way too many Johnson postcards already." The lady just paused, and said, "Don't think I've commonly heard that!"

[yellowbelliedtoad]

Went to a cool Antiquarian Book Fair yesterday! Saw a bunch of cool volumes, including an entire shelf of first-edition Johnsoniana, which almost made me tear up (crying wise. Not page-ripping wise). Even met a mutual friend of some people I know from the Johnson Societies, and we chatted for a while. Left a friend to her own devices while I read one of these first editions cover-to-cover.

However, I think the best interaction was one representative of the local rare books room seeing me from across the room, pointing and just saying, "You!", very accusingly. (I'm the person who constantly requests to see the Dictionary.)

[yellowbelliedtoad]

The one thing I could afford:

Old Goldsmith postcard! And bonus catalogue of all the cool Samuel Johnson books I'll never be able to own. Alas alas.

@fsawt , I thought of you.

[yellowbelliedtoad]

Went to a cool Antiquarian Book Fair yesterday! Saw a bunch of cool volumes, including an entire shelf of first-edition Johnsoniana, which almost made me tear up (crying wise. Not page-ripping wise). Even met a mutual friend of some people I know from the Johnson Societies, and we chatted for a while. Left a friend to her own devices while I read one of these first editions cover-to-cover.

However, I think the best interaction was one representative of the local rare books room seeing me from across the room, pointing and just saying, "You!", very accusingly. (I'm the person who constantly requests to see the Dictionary.)

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

I exist on the fine line between "historical knowledge is always imperfect, and it is impossible to reconstruct a whole person just from written material" and "He Would Not Fucking Say That"

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

After carefully consulting his extensive correspondence, his published and unpublished writing, and his diaries, I can say with a reasonably high degree of confidence that He Would Not Fucking Say That.

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

I imagine this is how being a historical consultant on a period drama must feel.

[yellowbelliedtoad]

Currently in the process of writing a small paper for a literary society about how authors have depicted Samuel Johnson in 21st-Century fiction, and I'm really resisting doing a spotlight on one scene of one book where Johnson kneels down, looks through the gap between two bricks with one eye, and is so surprised at what he sees that he moves back and then looks with the other eye.

Johnson, who was famously blind in one eye.