The Age of Johnson: The Library of Loren and Frances Rothschild

The library recorded in this book represents the result of fifty years of collecting the works of British writers of the Age of Samuel Johnson.

The Age of Johnson: The Library of Loren and Frances Rothschild brings together the most comprehensive collection of rare books and autograph works in private hands of the 18th-century literary giant Samuel Johnson, together with extensive collections of the works of the other principal authors of the period long-known as the Age of Johnson— including James Boswell, Edmund Burke, Frances Burney, Oliver Goldsmith, Hester (Thrale) Piozzi, Alexander Pope, and Jonathan Swift.

An introduction to each of these authors provides information placing the author in his or her historical and literary context, and the descriptive entries for each of the over 900 individual manuscripts, letters, and rare books records bibliographical information, significant facts, and critical information about the work recorded.
The individual entries, when viewed in the aggregate, survey and illuminate the breadth and depth of the literary and intellectual canon of the authors of the Age of Johnson, illuminate their relationships and their works to one another. The text taken as a whole demonstrates why Samuel Johnson, as an individual and as an author, defined the era long named for him.

Loren Rothschild, a former attorney and business executive, is chairman emeritus of the Huntington Library, Art Museum, Botanical Gardens. He has been collecting rare books and manuscripts for 50 years. Rothschild has donated his collections of the works of Sir Richard and Lady Isabel Burton, Evelyn Waugh, and Paul Theroux to the Huntington Library. His collection of the works of William Somerset Maugham is recorded in a bibliographic catalogue published by Heritage Book Shop, Los Angeles, in 2001. Throughout the past fifty years, British and Irish 18th-century literature has remained Rothschild's primary intellectual and collecting interest. Frances Rothschild has shared and encouraged Loren’s interest in compiling his manuscript and rare books collections. Frances is a presiding justice of the California Court of Appeal.