Samuel Johnson's life was situated within a rich social and intellectual community of friendships and antagonisms. This book is a collection of ten essays that explores relationships between Johnson and several of his main contemporaries and analyses some of the literary productions emanating from the pressures within those relationships.

 
List of Tables… v
Abbreviations … vi
Introduction ... 1
Part I. Personal Relationships: Letters and Conversation ... 11
One           Connecting with Three “Young Dogs”: Johnson’s Early Letters to Robert Chambers, Bennet Langton, and James Boswell ... 12
John Radner
Two           James Elphinston and Samuel Johnson: Contact, Irritations, and an “Argonautic” Letter ... 44
Christine Jackson-Holzberg
Three         The Case of the Missing Hottentot: John Dun’s Conversation with Samuel Johnson in Tour to the Hebrides as Reported by Boswell and Dun ... 79
James Caudle
Part II. Literary Relationships: Major Texts and Topics ... 118
Four           Oliver Goldsmith’s Revisions to The Traveller ... 119
James E. May
Five           “Down with her, Burney!”: Johnson, Burney, and the Politics of Literary Celebrity ... 165
Marilyn Francus
Six             In the First Circle: The Four Narrators of the Life of Savage ... 205
Lance Wilcox
Seven        “Under the shade of exalted merit”: Arthur Murphy’s A Poetical Epistle to Mr. Samuel Johnson, A.M. ... 236
Anthony W. Lee
Eight        Johnson, Burke, Boswell, and the Slavery Debate ... 258
Elizabeth Lambert
Nine         Samuel Johnson and Anna Seward: Solitude and Sensibility ... 295
Claudia Thomas Kairoff
Ten            Johnson, Warton, and the Popular Reader ... 331
Christopher Catanese
Acknowledgments... 358
Bibliography ... 360
Index ... 389
About the Contributors ... 390