The year 2009 marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Johnson.  To commemorate the event, Harvard University’s Houghton Library will host an international symposium to celebrate Johnson’s manifold contributions to intellectual and creative cultures. The symposium, which will be held Thursday, August 27, through Saturday, August 29, 2009, will examine or re-examine several aspects of Johnson's life and legacy. Plenary and concurrent sessions will address such topics as Johnson and gender; Johnson and the periodical essay; Johnson and modern scholarship; Johnson and the arts; Johnson and eighteenth-century intellectual history; Johnson and biography; Johnson, literary theory, and literary criticism; Johnson and slavery; and Johnson and his dictionary. Participating scholars include James Basker, OM Brack, Greg Clingham, Robert DeMaria, Helen Deutsch, Stephen Fix, Isobel Grundy, Jack Lynch, Anne McDermott, Allen Reddick, Bruce Redford, Michael Suarez, Gordon Turnbull, Richard Wendorf. A call for papers and session topics will be announced shortly.

The symposium will coincide with the opening of a major exhibition featuring rare books and manuscripts from the Mary & Donald Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson.

Considered one of the world’s most important collections of eighteenth-century literature, the Hyde Collection was assembled over a 60-year period.  With Johnson at its center, it encompasses letters, manuscripts, first editions, and works of art relating to Johnson and his circle.  The collection includes half of Johnson’s surviving letters and several drafts of his “Plan for a Dictionary” and is comprehensive in its coverage of Johnson’s published works.  A bequest of Mary, Viscountess Eccles (1912-2003), to Houghton Library, the Hyde Collection is also rich in materials that document the lives of Johnson’s friends and contemporaries, such as James Boswell, Hester Thrale Piozzi, Tobias Smollett, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and David Garrick.

Further details will be announced over the next few months, so please check this page periodically.