is perhaps the only eighteenth-century book to have hit the best-seller list in modern times – even his most famous work,
The Life of Samuel Johnson(1791), has never achieved that. It describes nine months over the course of 1762–63 when the 22-year old Scotsman first spent a prolonged period in the city whose delights and temptations so beguiled his imagination. The manuscript, tucked away in a secluded mansion near Aberdeen, was among a large tranche of papers discovered around 1930 and eventually found its way to Yale University. In 1950 it became the first in a series of editions of journals, under the direction of Frederick A. Pottle, and it has since been reprinted a number of times. A new version for Penguin by Gordon Turnbull, first published in 2010, supplies…
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Citation: Rogers, Pat. "London Journal, 1762-1763". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 September 2020 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3908, accessed 24 April 2024.]
