Southern Highlands Branch Meeting 2025-1

“Dr Johnson‘s Dictionary”

Susannah Fullerton OAM FRSN
Author, Literary Lecturer, and Tour Leader

Date: Thursday, 20 February 2025, 6.30 pm AEDT
Venue: RSL Mittagong, Carrington Room
All are welcome

Summary: In 1664 the Royal Society set up a committee ‘for improving the English tongue’ and creating a dictionary that might standardise spelling and pronunciation. That plan came to nothing. It was not until 1747 that a scholar named Samuel Johnson published a plan for a Dictionary of the English Language and embarked on the phenomenal task of compiling it. It was published in 1755 to great acclaim and, for more than a hundred years, it remained unsurpassed as a reference book to our language.

Susannah Fullerton tells the extraordinary story of how Johnson came to tackle this vast project, what assistance he received, his struggles and poverty as he worked away in the attic at Gough Square. He was granted honorary degrees and became Dr Johnson as a result, and the dictionary made his fame. The Royal Society had missed a great opportunity, but the world of lexicography was forever enriched by the stupendous efforts of Dr Samuel Johnson.

President of Jane Austin Society of Australia, Susannah Fullerton OAM FRSN majored in English Literature at the University of Auckland. She then completed a postgraduate degree in Victorian fiction and prose at the University of Edinburgh. For over 25 years Susannah has been President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia. She has lectured extensively on Jane Austen in Australia and overseas and has published many articles about Jane Austen’s works. She is the co-author of Jane Austen – Antipodean Views and published Jane Austen and Crime in 2004, and Brief Encounters: Literary Travellers in Australia (Picador) in 2009. Susannah’s latest books are A Dance with Jane Austen, Happily Ever After: Celebrating Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and a memoir Jane & I: A Tale of Austen Addiction.

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