Samuel Johnson

1709 - 1784

Thraliana - The diary of Mrs Hester Lynch Thrale

  • Posted on: 11 October 2009
  • By: David Thrale

Written by Hester Lynch Thrale. Published 1951 by Oxford at the Clarendon Press. Edited by Katherine C. Balderston When Hester was thirty-five years old, her husband Henry gave her a set of six handsome quarto blank books, bound in undressed calf, each bearing on its cover a red label stamped in gold with the title Thraliana. This took place in 1776, a few weeks before their thirteenth wedding anniversary. Thraliana is a collection of Hester Lynch Thrale's thoughts, experiences and some of her verses from this period of her life. It was important because it was almost, if not quite, the first English Ana.

Streatham Park

  • Posted on: 26 September 2009
  • By: David Thrale

Streatham Park, or Streatham Place, was built in 1730 by Ralph Thrale (1698-1758) on 89 acres of land bought from the local Lord of the Manor - the fourth Duke of Bedford. It was rumoured that the sale price was a ten-year supply of ale and porter for the Duke's home

Samuel Johnson

  • Posted on: 24 September 2009
  • By: David Thrale

Ten years after his single-handed production of his epoch making English dictionary, Samuel Johnson was introduced on to the Thrales on the 9th or 10th of January 1765.

In 1766, following a very severe bout of depression, Johnson spent most of the summer recuperating with the Thrales at their Streatham country house.

Johnson's regard for the Thrale's was very real, and it was heartily returned. Of Hester, Johnson wrote…

Her colloquial wit was a fountain of perpetual flow.

After this, Johnson became a part of the Thrale household and Streatham Park became a country retreat for a wide intellectual circle. Johnson was the lion-in-chief.

Latin ode to Hester Thrale

  • Posted on: 20 September 2009
  • By: David Thrale

Written by Samuel Johnson in Skye on 6 September 1775. Published in [Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson by Hester Thrale, and also in Thraliana - December 1777 entry. On 6 September 1775 Samuel Johnson wrote a Latin Ode to Thrale whilst on a tour of the Scottish Shetlands. This is reproduced below on the left. On the right is an translation in English Sapphics by Jonathan B.P.J. Hadfield on 13 April 2004, who has very generously given Thrale.com consent to reproduce his work.

Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson by Hester Lynch Thrale

  • Posted on: 15 September 2009
  • By: David Thrale

The Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson or the Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. During the Last Twenty Years of His Life by Hester Thrale, was first published 26 March 1786.

It was based on the various notes and anecdotes of Samuel Johnson that Thrale kept in her Thraliana. She wrote the work in Italy while she lived there for three years after marrying Gabriel Piozzi.

The work was first published 26 March 1786.