Quote of the month: April 2025

To look up to the sky for the nutriment of our bodies, is the condition of nature; to call upon the sun for peace and gaiety, or deprecate the clouds lest sorrow should overwhelm us, is the cowardice of idleness, and the idolotry of fully.

Idler, no. 11 (June 24, 1758)

The Johnson Society of Australasia

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.

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

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.

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