The Johnson Society of Australasia enters its 31st year, being founded in Melbourne in 1993. It remains strong with 40 members, including several of the foundation members. Members reside in most Australian States and there is a strong contingent in New Zealand. They come from a variety of backgrounds but what they all share is a fascination for the eighteenth century whether it be literature, art, history or ideas and seen through the lens of Samuel Johnson.
2025 David Fleeman Memorial Lecture
States of Happiness in Abraham Cowley and Samuel Johnson.
Philip Smallwood Emeritus Professor of English Birmingham University
Multipurpose Room 1, Kathleen Syme Community Centre
251 Faraday Street, Carlton
Saturday March 8 2025
1:30 pm Registration 2:00 pm Start $10 entry
The 17th Century poet Abraham Cowley wrote both religious and secular poems and in this presentation Professor Smallwood will be focusing on Cowley’s program for the happy life from the “Essays in Verse and Prose,” and to a lesser extent on poems from the Anacreontics and the Miscellanies. Professor Smallwood will also bring with him a copy of the original 1668 folio edition of Cowley’s Work.
Cowley was a particular favourite of Samuel Johnson who considered him under-rated amongst the Metaphysics. On the journey to the Hebrides, Johnson remarked to Boswell that “There was more sense in a line of Cowley than in a page … of Pope’. Johnson’s Life of Cowley was the first volume he wrote for the Series. “Lives of the Poets”
Booking essential: donna46@live.com.au
2024 David Fleeman Memorial Lecture
Dr Marc Mierowsky on ‘Hacks for bread’: writing lives and the writing life
Kathleen Syme Centre 251 Faraday Street Carlton Saturday September 14 2024
1:40 pm Registration Refreshments 2:00 pm Start
Samuel Johnson was a great admirer of Daniel Defoe. Rather than focussing on Johnson’s views on the novel—the form Defoe is credited with inaugurating—this lecture looks at how the lives Defoe wrote in fiction might have shaped Johnson’s biographical practice.
To do so, Marc Mierowsky will examine the ethics that underpinned Defoe’s and Johnson’s approach to writing lives, and trace the ways these ethics were shaped by their own lives as writers.
Marc Mierowsky is an ARC DECRA Fellow in English and Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne. He is the associate editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Correspondence of Daniel Defoe (2022) and co-editor, of Defoe’s The Fortunate Mistress [Roxana] for Oxford World’s Classics (2024). With Sarah Balkin, he is co-author of Comedy and Controversy: Scripting Public Speech (Cambridge, 2024). His book A Spy Amongst Us: Daniel Defoe’s Secret Service and the Plot to End Scottish Independence is coming out with Yale University.
To book send message via Contact Page
Annual Seminar
Saturday June 8 10:30-4:30
Multipurpose Room 1 Kathleen Syme Community Centre
251 Faraday Street, Carlton
PROGRAM
10:30 Registration. Tea/Coffee
11:00 Welcome: Barrie Sheppard, President
11:10 The ‘unclubbable’ Hawkins. A defence of Sir John Peter Hardie
11:50 A reading of a letter from Johnson to Hester Thrale Barrie Sheppard
12:10 Isham and the Boswell papers: a sample John Byrne
Lunch 12:25—1:30
1:30 Oliver Goldsmith: a member of the Club Dennis Dorwick with Bronwen Hickman
2:30 On the survival of slanguage Kate Burridge
3:00 Johnson on Friendship Paul Tankard
4:00 Closing remarks: President
4:15 Finish
$35 Members $40 Guests (Includes Lunch and Refreshments)
For catering purposes, booking is essential. For full details see the program linked here.
Friday 19th July John Byrne at Rare Book Week – “Rebuilding Johnsons’ Library”
Saturday 14th September Fleeman Lecture: Dr Marc Mierowsky on a comparison of Samuel Johnson and Daniel Defoe
Saturday December 7th Christmas Convivial
If you would like to be kept up to date on the program please use the contact page.