May 12, 2011 - Sale 2247

Sale 2247 - Lot 281

Price Realized: $ 156
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 200 - $ 300
[JOHNSON, SAMUEL]. Green, Frances W. Commonplace book featuring pages from her parents' diaries. 35 pages. 4to, contemporary calf, moderate wear. England, 1796-1860

Additional Details

Frances Whormby (Dodd) Green (1817-1885) began keeping this commonplace book in 1852. Most of the volume consists of pages and passages cut from from the diaries of her mother Martha (Wilson) Dodd (1792-1834) and her father, the Rev. Philip Stanhope Dodd (1775-1852). These diary entries, dated from 1796 to 1827, have been pasted or laid in to the volume. Some of the passages relate to the death of her grandfather, the Rev. Richard Dodd in 1811. This grandfather was the brother of the famous Dr. William Dodd, who was sentenced to death for forgery and was befriended by Samuel Johnson while awaiting the gallows. In addition to the diary pages are several literary quotations transcribed by Frances Green, many by Richard Porson, including Porson's poem "On the Publication of Mrs. Thrale Piozzi, Mr. Boswell, and Sir John Hawkins on the Subject of Dr. Johnson."