Joseph Johnson was one of the most prominent booksellers of his time. He helped shape the thoughts of an era by publishing the works of some of the biggest thinkers of the second half of the eighteenth century, including Joseph Priestly, scientist and theologian; Henry Fuseli, mannerist painter and writer; John Newton, sea captain and evangelical preacher; William Wordsworth; Joel Barlow, adventurer, poet, and pamphleteer; William Beckford, author of Vathek; Richard Price, mathematician and dissenting minister; and S.T Coleridge (Tyson, 1).

Not only did he support innovative writers and thinkers through his work, he also hosted them for dinner in his London home (at approximately No. 22, St. Paul’s Church Yard). These gatherings brought authors into contact with each other, and they were able to openly discuss and debate new ideas. Frequent attenders formed a group that became known as “The Johnson Circle”. Returning from Paris after observing the French Revolution, Mary Wollstonecraft joined this influential circle, that included radical thinkers like William Godwin, Thomas Paine (author of Rights of Man, published in 1791), Thomas Holcroft, William Blake, and after 1793, William Wordsworth (Britannica). 

Joseph Johnson was a good friend to Wollstonecraft and helped her publish her most important work, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (which was a response to Paine’s work) in 1792. It was at one of Johnson’s dinners where Wollstonecraft and Godwin met, leading to a relationship that would result in the birth of Mary Shelley, as well as the publication of a number of Wollstonecraft’s works after her death by Godwin. 

To learn more about J. Johnson and his achievements and influence in the publishing industry, click here.

To learn more about Godwin and Wollstonecraft’s relationship, and for a primary account (via Godwin’s diary) of their first meeting, click here.