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Article: Dr. Johnson's Women.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- The Historian
- Article date:
- March 22, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Dr. Johnson's Women. By Norma Clarke. (London and New York: Hambledon and London, 2000. Pp. xii, 260. $24.95.)
The title of this elegant, thoughtful study may mislead one into thinking it achieves less than it does. The title suggests an account of women whose importance for Samuel Johnson, the great eighteenth-century essayist, critic, and biographer, was primarily personal. Norma Clarke's book, however, actually concerns women writers of Johnson's period (the mid-to-late 1700s) and their efforts to define the place of the female author in Britain. With one exception, the relationships between Johnson and the women Clarke discusses were professional. They are ...