Transactions 1985 [antikvár]

TRANSACTIONS 1985yhe tumult and the shouting of the Bicentenary have now died away and we are faced with a long wait until 2009 for our next major anniversary. However, as Donald Greene's Presidential Address reminds us we have much to do in the next twenty-four years. One area for exploration is examined in Ken Edward Smith's article on the Shakespeare edition: surely, with the Dictionary, the most unexamined of the major works New biographical material still turns up as Pat Rogers's note on a new Michael Johnson document shows. Further new material on Johnson's father will be discussed in the next number.The next Transactions to appear will be a double issue for f986 and 1987 and is expected to be published early in 1988. It will contain a new section: a reprinting of a document on Johnson now out of print. Often these will be letters, pieces of memoirs, poems perhaps only published in out-of-the-way magazines or books: the little bricks out of which a major biography is built. The first of these reprintings will probably be Edward Lovibond's poem about Shakespeare's mulberry tree which contains an allusion to Johnson and Garrick's journey to London in 1737. Boswell gives us the reference in the relevant passage in the Life but even L. F. Powell, as far as one can tell, failed to pursue it. The f987 reprinting will be the 1745 letter from Jacob Tonson to Edward Cave effectively blocking Johnson's proposed Shakespeare edition. Further suggestions for reprintings of this nature will be gratefully received.f985 is the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Johnsons' wedding. Our front cover is a detail from an anonymous nineteenth-century watercolour of S. Werburgh's church, Derby, in the Birthplace Museum. No longer used for regular worship S. Werburgh's is the proposed home for a new Derby Arts Centre.GRAHAM NICHOLLS