Joseph Johnson (publisher) - 1790s: Years of Radicalism

1790s: Years of Radicalism

As radicalism took hold in Britain in the 1790s, Johnson became increasingly involved in its causes: he was a member of the Society for Constitutional Information, which was attempting to reform Parliament; he published works defending Dissenters after the religiously motivated Birmingham Riots in 1791; and he testified on behalf of those arrested during the 1794 Treason Trials. Johnson published works championing the rights of slaves, Jews, women, prisoners, Dissenters, chimney sweeps, abused animals, university students forbidden from marrying, victims of press gangs, and those unjustly accused of violating the game laws.

Political literature became Johnson's mainstay in the 1790s: he published 118 works, which amounted to 57% of his total political output. As Chard notes, "hardly a year went by without at least one anti-war and one anti-slave trade publication from Johnson". In particular, Johnson published abolitionist works, such as minister and former slave-ship captain John Newton's Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade (1788), Barbauld's Epistle to William Wilberforce (1791), and Captain John Gabriel Stedman's Narrative, of a Five Years' Expedition, Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (1796) (with illustrations by Blake). Most importantly he helped organize the publication of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789), the autobiography of former slave Olaudah Equiano.

Later in the decade, Johnson focused on works about the French revolution, concentrating on those from France itself, but he also published commentary from America by Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe. Johnson's determination to publish political and revolutionary works, however, fractured his Circles: Dissenters were alienated from Anglicans during efforts to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts and moderates split from radicals during the French revolution. Johnson lost customers, friends, and writers, including the children's author Sarah Trimmer. Braithwaite speculates that Johnson also lost business due to his willingness to put out works that promoted the "challenging new historicist versions of the scriptures", such as those by Alexander Geddes.

Scholars are, however, careful to note that except for Benjamin Franklin's works and Joel Barlow's pamphlets, Johnson did not print anything truly revolutionary. He refused to publish Paine's Rights of Man and William Blake's The French Revolution, for example. It is almost impossible to determine Johnson's own personal political beliefs from the historical record. Marilyn Gaull argues that "if Johnson were radical, indeed if he had any political affiliation ... it was accidental". Gaull describes Johnson's "liberalism" as that "of generous, open, fair-minded, unbiased defender of causes lost and won". His real contribution, she contends, was "as a disseminator of contemporary knowledge, especially science, medicine, and pedagogical practice" and as an advocate for a popular style. He encouraged all of his writers to use "plain syntax and colloquial diction" so that "self-educated readers" could understand his publications. Johnson's association with writers such as Godwin has previously been used to emphasize his radicalism, but Braithwaite points out that Godwin only became a part of Johnson's Circle late in the 1790s; Johnson's closest friends—Priestley, Fuseli, and Bonnycastle—were much more politically moderate. Johnson was not a populist or democratic bookseller: he catered to the self-educating middle class.