The Historical Importance of Michael Johnson’s Letters

Description:In 1839 Mr. Fenton, an Estate Agent of the Duke of Sutherland wrote to James Loch, the Duke’s Chief Estate Agent, concerning Reverend George Plaxton’s correspondence with Michael Johnson.

In 1838 a stone statue of Dr. Samuel Johnson was constructed in Lichfield’s Market Square following the publication of James Boswell’s popular biography of Johnson in 1791. By this time Lichfield was attracting visitors as Dr. Johnson’s birthplace, and the bookselling trade was extremely important in the town. It is possible that Loch and Fenton hoped their discovery of Plaxton’s correspondence with Samuel Johnson’s father may have had great literary value.

Fenton appears to have discovered the letters from Michael Johnson whilst inspecting Reverend Plaxton’s correspondence. He informs Loch about ‘a Letter of Michael Johnson the Lichfield Bookseller, Father of the great Lexicographer’. He notes that the letter would be ‘a great prize to any future Edition of Boswell’s Life’.

Fenton remarks that Michael Johnson’s signature is ‘very similar to the way in which Dr. Johnson wrote his surname’.

Contextual Information From: 'Lichfield: From the Reformation to c.1800', A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14: Lichfield (1990), pp. 14-24. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=42337.

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