The JSA program for 1996 is coming together, with some pleasant surprises for members.
The date for the annual Seminar has been fixed for Saturday, July 13, at Bell's Hotel, South Melbourne, with a highly interesting list of speakers, and with lunch and dinner included.
This time, all the speakers except one will be from the ranks of our own members - Bronwen Hickman, Henry Gordon-Clark, Barry Sheppard, Goeff Brand Nick Hudson and Paul Tankard.
The exception will be Dr John M Thomson, a New Zealander who has an international reputation as a music historian, with a special interest in music of the 18th Century. His talk will be supplemented by his playing on the harpsichord.
And another piece of good musical news: Carla Hawley's a capella group, whose presentation of Songs from the Gentleman's Magazine was so popular at the 1994 seminar, will be performing again.
The Annual General Meeting and David Fleeman Memorial Lecture will be held on Saturday, September 14. This time, there's a change of venue.
Clive and Meg Probyn have kindly offered their own house for the meeting and lecture, and a special feature will be a presentation of 18th Century food.
Clive has promised to cook what he describes as "an enormous roast of beef" while a "Johnson Trifle" will be prepared by Marjorie Marris, an expert on food of the period.
Also, for the AGM, members are invited to bring along their favorite Johnsonian treasures - books, pictures, souvenirs, momentos, etc., which you think other members would be interested in seeing.
Complete programs for both the seminar and the AGM and lecture will be included in the next edition of The Southern Johnsonian, scheduled for May.
The JSA has received some splendid gifts in the past few months. Accompanying a House of Lords Christmas card from our patron, Viscountess Eccles, was a copy of Collecting and Recollecting James Boswell 1740-1795, the catalogue of a bicentenary exhibition commemorating the death of Boswell, held at the Grolier Club, New York, from July 12 to September 17, 1995.
The exhibition was put together from the collections of Yale University and Four Oaks Farm and was curated by William Zachs and our patron.
The Grolier Club is the greatest society of bibliophiles in the United States and one of the greatest in the world.
In addition to being a valuable reference source, the catalogue is a superb example of graphic design and typography, and is now a treasured addition to our library, under the care of our secretary, who has written a letter of thanks to Lady Eccles.
Another recent gift to the JSA came from the Chairman of the Johnson Society in Lichfield, Mr W J Wilson, who sent us a facsimile of the manuscript of a letter from Boswell to Johnson in September, 1779 - the earliest of the complete surviving letters from the biographer to his subject.
A note on the handsomely printed folder in which the facsimile was contained draws attention to the comparative rarity of surviving letters exchanged between the two. The note, by Graham Nicholls, points out that only one of just over 100 letters from Johson to Boswell survives in its entirety, while of 125 letters by Boswell to Johnson, only four survive complete.
Mr Wilson also included a number of other keepsakes, including a copy of the menu and program for the Johnson Society's annual supper at the Guildhall, Lichfield, on September 23, and a Boswell Dinner, on May 20.
The Chairman also sent us three excellent photographs showing Johnson's birthplace in Lichfield, his old school, and the Langton family home in Lincolnshire, seat of Johnson's great friend, Bennet Langton.
A further addition to the JSA library, a volume entitled The Death and Religion of Samuel Johnson, is the generous gift of the author, Professor Dsaisuke Nagashima, our regular Japanese correspondent and Secretary of The Samuel Johnson Club of Japan.
In the copy of the book, Professor Nagashima enclosed a table of contents in English which reveals a very thorough coverage of the principal events and developments in Johnson's life which bear upon the intention of the work.
As the book is published in Japanese, it is unfortunately impossible to be more informative unless the reader were as fluent in that language as Professor Nagashima is in English.
In an earlier letter to Secretary, Bryan Reid, Professor Nagashima acknowledged the assistance given him by our patron, Viscountess Eccles, and the Four Oaks Farm library, in preparing his work.
The Death and Religion of Samuel Johnson was published in 1995 by Saikoukai Shuppan, Tokyo.
Johnson's Dictionary is available on CD-ROM, published by Cambridge University in association with the University of Birmingham.
What would Johnson have made of these electronic marvels? You're invited to supply some dictum, in the Great Cham's style, which might cover the situation!
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