Johnson's England: An Account of the Life and Manners of His Age, in Two Volumes

xxiii, 405; ix, 404 pp. Two volume set. Includes about 120 full-page plates in half-tone and line and many other illustrations in the text. Twenty-eight distinguished contributors describe the England that Dr. Johnson knew: its habits, clothes, and amusements; its institutions--the Church, the Army and Navy, the Law; its painting, building, furniture, sculpture, and music; its achievements in industry and exploration and science and farming; its methods in education and poor-law relief; its newspapers, bookshops, coffee-houses, theatres, inns, turnpikes, prisons, hospitals. Politics alone are not dealt with. The period covered is roughly the sixty years between 1730, just before Johnson came to London, and 1790, just after his death.