Letter To Chesterfield - Critical Commentary

Critical Commentary

The Letter to Chesterfield has continued to be commented on by some of the most noted critics and authors since its publication to the present day. In 1853, Thomas Carlyle, in his biography of Johnson proclaimed its significance:

Listen, once again, to that far-famed Blast of Doom, proclaiming into the ear of Lord Chesterfield, and, through him, of the listening world, that patronage should be no more! —Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Johnson

In the twentieth century, Alvin Kernan wrote that the Letter to Chesterfield

...still stands as the Magna Carta of the modern author, the public announcement that the days of courtly letters were at last ended, that the author was the true source of his work and that he and it were no longer dependent on patron or the social system he represented. —Alvin Kernan, Samuel Johnson and the Impact of Print

However, to think that the letter was written out of anger or a respond to neglect would be wrong. Instead, they claim that Johnson was forced into a fake status "of a man who was soon to declare, in a Preface perhaps already written, that his great work had been written, without the 'patronage of the great." In essence, an outsider would think that Chesterfield was patronizing the work continually.