Membership subscriptions for the Johnson Society of Australia can now be renewed through the PayPal online payment system.

This will be particularly useful for overseas members, but it will also make it quicker and more convenient for all members to get their subscriptions in on time.

Dr Barry Jones, one of Australia’s “living treasures” will deliver the JSA’s 2009 David Fleeman Memorial Lecture after the Annual General Meeting at the English Speaking Union on Saturday, October 3, which starts at 2.30 pm.

His lecture is entitled Samuel Johnson and his Great Contemporaries.

The Making of Dr Johnson, the latest book by JSA President John Wiltshire, officially launched by John Byrne at the 2009 seminar, traces the development of the public image of Samuel Johnson since the publication of Boswell’s Life.

The book shows there was much more to Johnson than is revealed by Boswell, who simply did not know much about important stages of Johnson’s life, and who also tended to gloss over, or hide, some aspects which did not accord with his virtual canonisation of  his subject.

John Wiltshire draws proper attention to other 18^th Century biographies and memoirs of Johnson, notably those of Sir John Hawkins and Mrs Thrale, which draw a much different picture of Johnson’s character and behaviour.  In addition, due weight is given to contemporary criticism of his work, his literary style, and his aggressive argumentation.

An appreciative audience enjoyed the new program format for the Johnson Tercentenary Seminar and Dinner on July 25.

A reading by Bronwen Hickman from Fanny Burney’s diaries separated two excellent papers by Barrie Sheppard and Geoff Brand, which provided different, but resonating, insights into 18^th Century concepts of nature, the problem of evil, based on Soames Jenyns’ letters on the Origin of Evil, and the idea of nature’s productions forming a “Great Chain of Being”.

John Wiltshire’s paper, The Afterlife of Dr Johnson, was a fitting prelude to John Byrne’s official launching of our President’s  latest work, The Making of Dr Johnson.

The JSA celebrated the Johnson Tercentenary in typically convivial fashion at a dinner on Friday, May 15, at the Montague Hotel in South Melbourne, where President John Wiltshire welcomed 19 guests.

Before, during and after the dinner, a number of celebrated eminences on the Johnsonian landscape were honoured by readings from The Life and other sources. John Wiltshire read the letter to Chesterfield, surely one of literary history’s greatest “come-uppances”, Barrie Sheppard entertained us with a reading of Soames Jenyns verse epitaph written at the death of Johnson; and Boswell's reply, Bronwen Hickman chose extracts from Fanny Burney’s diaries recording the acrimonious and one-sided argument by Johnson with Mr Pepys, while Bryan Reid read Boswell’s description of his meeting with Johnson in Tom Davies’ parlour.

After a number of extended outages this year the JSA web site has now been moved to a much more reliable hosting service.

The JSA has maintained an online presence for more than 11 years, originally as part of Bryan Reid's personal Ozemail webspace (where the newsletter archives are still located), then hosted for free on the web servers of a number of generous organisations including Australian web analytics software company Aimstats. 

The Annual General Meeting of the JSA on October 4, was the first to be held following the incorporation of the Society.  The committee and office bearers, constituted according to the incorporation rules, were unanimously elected:

President: John Wiltshire

Vice-President: Clive Probyn

Treasurer: Barrie Sheppard

Secretary: Barbara Niven

Committee: Bryan Reid, Bronwen Hickman.

The two other members of the pre-incorporation committee, Denis Le Neuf and Paul Tankard, have been asked to become ex-officio members.