Scholarship and Entertainment at the AGM

About 40 members and friends, including some from the Jane Austen Society of Victoria, turned up at the English Speaking Union on September 23 for the seventh Annual General Meeting of the Johnson Society of Australia, and to hear Dr John Wiltshire present the 2000 David Fleeman Memorial Lecture.

The lecture was conducted in John's enjoyable and well-known combination of distinguished scholarship, and keen humour which pleased both Johnsonians and Jane Austenites alike. President Paul Brown offers some thoughts on the lecture on Page 2 of this newsletter. After the lecture most who attended stayed on for an excellent sit-down supper and convivial conversation in the usual JSA style. During the proceedings, the 1999 Fleeman lecture by Prof Kevin Hart and the latest volume of the JSA Papers were delivered and made available for sale. In his annual report, President Paul Brown announced that, in accordance with the Constitution, he would be retiring as President at the next AGM in September 2001. The meeting elected two new members to the committee.

John Wiltshire's Fleeman:
Paul Brown reflects

As a teenager sitting my O-level GCE in English Lit, with Northanger Abbey as my "set book", I was unaware of any Jane Austen cult, and even less aware of her gift for satire. Nor was I aware that she was under the thrall of my own literary-mentor-to-be, Samuel Johnson.

I had a taste for literary levity, but the joys of this genre in the work of Austen were excluded from this formal educational experience. And thus it continued until the late twentieth century, when I was exposed to the works of Samuel Johnson, and re-exposed to Austen and to wider aspects of 18th (and 19th) century lit. I believe that I can appreciate Austen better now! Through mentors such as John Wiltshire, I have been permitted a second bite of the cherry.

As ever gently satirical, John revisited Johnson and Austen, "both mouthpieces for late 18th century discourse". Immanent in their works, he found universal dialectics of the rational and the emotional and the classical and the romantic, Johnson tending to reflect on aspects of the former, and Austen, the latter.

What did Austen think of Johnson? He is the only male author that she ever quoted widely. In Northanger Abbey, she ridiculed his shakes; in Mansfield Park, she defended him against them. Contemporary literary criticism has moved beyond considerations of authorial consanguinity, imitation, and "happy family" resemblances between the oeuvres of Johnson and Austen, and instead emphasises what it calls their "intertextuality": the refashioning of the Johnson idiom in the work of Austen. John reflected that perhaps Austen and Johnson were transcendentally united in their mutual love of God.

Two new committee members elected

We said farewell to two members of the Committee at the Annual General Meeting in September. Roland Knights, who took over as Treasurer in 1998, has resigned due to family and business pressures, while Carla Hawley, who was a foundation member of the JSA and of the committee, decided to make the opportunity for someone new to take on the job.

Our thanks go to both for their loyalty and hard work for the committee. In their places, the AGM elected Basil Stafford as Treasurer and Tanya Tankard as committee member.

Basil, a Melbourne barrister, says he is officially classed as a boy by the Great Man, admitting to a preference for clarest over both port and brandy. He told the Southern Johnsonian:

"Putting a boy in charge of the books was an act of great courage by the JSA, particularly having regard to the fact that the last thing Basil jun balanced was a see-saw at the age of 6 and at the cost of two teeth.

"Members can be comforted that I don't gamble - a good quality in a treasurer. Gambling is for the statistically challenged," he says. He assured us that any error in the books would be due to incompetence and not a desire to travel.

Basil, aged 47, and his wife, Bernardette have two daughters, Millie and Romy, aged 11 and 6. His father Basil Stafford sen is also a member of the JSA.

Tanya Tankard is married to fellow-committee member Paul Tankard, and has two adult sons and daughters-in-law. She is a career educator and is at present Learning Initiatives Coordinator with Swinburne TAFE, and was previously coordinator and teacher of English As a Second Language. Her M.Ed studies have focused on cross-cultural communications and managing diversity. Tanya spent a month teaching spoken English in North Vietnam and her work has also taken her to Indonesia. Twenty years ago, she lived in Irian Jaya for four years.

Tanya is committed to the preservation and enjoyment of the environment, reading and writing, and enjoys acting and choral singing.

After 30 years, the Fleeman Johnsonian bibliography

J.D. Fleeman (compiler), A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson, Treating his Published Works from the Beginnings to 1984, prepared for publication by James McLaverty, 2 v. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). 1972 pp. A$525.00 per vol. (UK, £140 per vol.)

One of the last honours bestowed on J.D Fleeman was to be invited to be the Patron of the newly-formed Johnson Society of Australia. As is often the case with such positions, the honour was all ours, but it lasted far too short a time. David Fleeman died in Oxford in July 1994, leaving behind him a remarkable body of Johnsonian scholarship. His final work and magnum opus, this huge Bibliography, left almost complete, is now published in two volumes by Oxford University Press.

Fleeman had been working on the task for thirty years, and his publications over this time show him circling around the subject. Having published lists of the extant copies of books Johnson owned, the books he subscribed to, his surviving documents and manuscripts, the books dedicated to him, his prospectuses and proposals, and an account of his professional earnings, a full bibliography of Johnson could have been the only conclusion.

I hesitate to say that every member of the JSA should have a copy. It is a massive work - almost two thousand pages, in two fat volumes - of pure scholarship. Johnson himself observed (in a letter of 23 April 1778) that "a mere antiquarian is a rugged being." It lists every edition of every published work of Johnson's, up to the year 1984 (being 200 years after Johnson's death). There are 264 titles (I had to count them), and heaven knows how many items. Of items published before 1800, it gives a complete bibliographical description.

It includes not only works published, but pieces written or perhaps written (even if subsequently lost), as well as texts engraved (a surprising number of epitaphs) or dictated and one (Item 72.2MBG) which was put on the collar of a goat. Interestingly it includes a great many works to which Johnson contributed - perhaps a few lines or revisions, and sometimes unidentifiable. You have to read carefully, almost between the lines, to discover what was Johnson's contribution (or supposed contribution) to some of these works. But such things are or might be a part of Johnson's work, and they must be considered.

Such a bibliography is not for reading, but I can claim to have looked through the work from start to finish. Johnsonian book collectors will of course want it, and all scholarly libraries, but the average reader of Johnson will find things to fascinate them on every second page. Fleeman gathers and describes. He ventures the occasional opinion, sometimes strongly (of item 88.5OT, Boswell's scurrilous "Ode by Samuel Johnson to Mrs. Thrale") he says, "It has no place in the Johnson canon." Why, we might ask, is it included? Because, it (and a number of other attributed works) are part of the history of Johnson's reputation.

J.D. Fleeman's final work will generate whole new lines of reading and inquiry, and is a worthy text with which to inaugurate a new century of Johnson scholarship and appreciation.
--Paul Tankard

Notes from the Western Idler

Members will be saddened to learn of the sudden death of David Parker on August 24. David was for many years the editor of the papers published by the Johnson Society of London. He had been a banker until his retirement, after which he lived in Oxford.

David and I had corresponded for many years before we met in 1996 when he provided a sumptuous lunch at his residence for myself, Isabel Fleeman, whose late husband, Dr David Fleeman was the first patron of the JSA, and the well-known Oxford antiquarian bookseller Ann Riddler. Later, in 1997 and 1998, I visited Oxford again to meet with David, to explore the bookshops in that beautiful city together and to discuss matters Johnsonian with those he would gather together for our meetings. Mrs Fleeman was always included and on my last visit I met Michael Bundock, to whom David handed over his position of editor of The Johnson Society of London.

David had a very fine eye for a good book. I recall that in 1996 we visited Blackwell's together where he found for me a particularly good copy of Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland from the library of Dr Fleeman, annotated by him. David had a very wide circle of acquaintances in the Johnsonian world and I was privileged to meet many of his friends during a visit I made to Lichfield in 1997 when he and I attended the birthday celebrations. A man of deep learning and a wonderful sense of humour, he once told me that his greatest delight in the Johnsonian world was the friendships that he had achieved with other Johnsonians. He will be sadly missed.

An excellent new publication on the Johnsonian background has just been published. I am sure you will all enjoy reading Dr Johnson's London by Liza Picard, published by Weidenfeld and Nicholson in London, 2000. The book was reviewed in the Australian's Review of Books for October. This is a wonderful book to dip into. Its breadth can be gauged from the jacket blurb: "Life in 18th Century London when private madhouses were a profitable line and false teeth could be ordered by post; when chalk was used to thicken milk and lead to blacken teeth. Road rage, press releases and takeaways, and Dr Marten's Chymical Drops, the Viagra of the time..." Don't miss this little gem.

I have been rearranging and sorting through my Johnsonian ephemera. While re-reading some old copies of The New Rambler then published as a journal of The Johnson Society of London, I was fascinated to learn that in 1953 where was a thriving Johnson Society of the River Plate, Buenos Aires. This society was stiull active in 1955. In that year there was a Boswell club both in Chicago and New York, publishing The Chicago Rambler and The Creole Rambler respectively. One wonders what became of those bodies and their papers. Even more remarkable is a note in the issue of July 1955 to the effect that a Mr Stepan Kresic of Zagreb was translating into Serbo-Croat an abridgment of Boswell's Life of Johnson! Has anyone ever seen or heard of a copy?

I re-discovered, among my ephemera, two pieces of music with a Johnsonian theme. Firstly, I have the sheet music to The Prayer written by Dr Arthur B. Plante of Oxford, the words of which are Johnson's last prayer. I also have The Johnson Anthem with words and music by Dr Plante. I shall bring these pieces to a future seminar and it may be that someone will play them for us. Both pieces date from the first 10 years of the 20th Century. I have never seen this music catalogued other than when I purchased the items quite some years ago.

For the collectors among you, please remember that the ANZAAB Book Fair will be held on November 17 and 18 in the Malvern Town Hall. It should be a great occasion. I am travelling across for it and I hope to find some treasurers on which I will report to you in my next column. Perhaps I will meet some of you at the fair.

Finally, I am currently seeking to build up my collection of editions of Rasselas. If any of you see early 20th Century or any 19th Century editions in any of the bookshops you visit would you please ask the dealer to contact me on my fax number (09) 9481 6595 with details.

Alternatively, you could call me and leave a message on my home telephone, (08) 9381 8180. I would appreciate your assistance as I am attempting to gather an edition from every year since the publication of the great work in 1769.

New JSA publications now available!

Kevin Hart's 1999 David Fleeman Memorial Lecture How to read a Page of Boswell is now on sale.

This beautifully-produced 60-page publication is available for $20 per copy - a much lower price than for previous Fleeman lectures, following a change of publisher. Kevin Hart's lecture is a piece of distinguished scholarship and a very collectable publication.

Also available are the new Johnson Society Papers, Volume 4, Parts 1 and 2, in which selected papers delivered at recent JSA seminars are collected. Price is $15 per set.

Part 1 contains:

• * Johnson on Life and Death (Rusi Khan)
• * The Effect of Judgement (Philip Harvey)
• * Johnson and Natural Philosophy (Nicholas Hudson)

TO: Paul Tankard, c/o English Department, Monash University, Wellington Road,Clayton, Vic 3168:

Please send me....copies of the 1999 Fleeman lecture @ $20 per copy
 Please send me ....copies of Volume 4 of the Johnson Society of Australia Papers at $15 per set.

I enclose cheque/money order for $.......... (payable to The Johnson Society of Australia).

NAME.................................................................................................
ADDRESS........................................................................................

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