Samuel Johnson and the Politics of Hanoverian England

This is a lively and readable reinterpretation of Georgian political life by a leading historian of the eighteenth century. Cannon uses Samuel Johnson's remarkable career as a point of entry into the period, exploring such major contemporary issues as education, the poor, capital punishment, the colonies, and Toryism. He challenges many assumptions about Johnson's own attitudes, and offers a substantial modification to the traditional picture of Hanoverian England.