A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson
A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson is a comic literary memoir spoken by a narrator who claims to have lived since 1690. The impossible witness places himself among eighteenth-century writers while repeatedly exposing his own vanity. Its fantasy serves antiquarian humor and self-parody rather than a revelation of Mythos immortality.
3 min read · 552 words
Publication and the invented witness
Written in 1917, the piece appeared in the November 1917 United Amateur, volume 17, number 2, on pages 21–24.
The speaker claims that his apparent birth in America in 1890 is a cover story and that he was actually born in Devonshire two centuries earlier. This deliberate correspondence with Lovecraft's real birth year helps make the memoir a joke about its author's old-fashioned literary persona.
The narrative does not explain longevity through a spell, chemical treatment or nonhuman ancestry. The exaggerated age establishes the comic license to speak as a survivor of the period.
Sources: H. P. Lovecraft Archive — fiction in composition order, A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson — publication data, A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson — original text
Meeting Johnson
The narrator first recalls hearing about Johnson's poem London through Alexander Pope. He then claims a personal introduction by James Boswell at the Mitre Tavern in 1763.
His detailed description of Johnson's clothing, manner and appearance imitates the texture of a remembered encounter. The illusion of familiarity is immediately complicated when he tries to obtain praise for his own writing.
Johnson answers with a rebuke that turns the narrator's self-advertisement into evidence against him. Their subsequent exchanges repeatedly place the would-be memoirist in the position of someone eager for recognition and unable to control the conversation.
Sources: A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson — original text
The club and its miniature rivalries
Much of the middle section concerns a literary club, its meeting places, members and social frictions. The narrator lists distinguished figures and offers judgments about their conversational abilities, politics and personal habits.
The claimed intimacy allows him to present himself as both participant and judge. Yet he also admits that he was tolerated more for age than brilliance. The gap between authority of tone and limited social success remains part of the comedy.
References to the literary and amateur press associations of the narrator's own present link the eighteenth-century setting with a contemporary world of competing writers. The memoir's historical costume does not remove its interest in the small disputes of literary communities.
Sources: A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson — original text
Revision without inspiration
A later anecdote concerns poor verse that Johnson remembers for its awkwardness. The narrator rewrites it into smoother formal lines and presents the result for approval.
Johnson concedes no corresponding achievement in poetic substance. The episode separates the repair of meter and diction from the creation of wit or imagination, while once again making the narrator's bid for distinction rebound against him.
The humor depends on the mismatch between elaborate stylistic performance and the modest result it produces. The prose's antique spelling and capitalization participate in the same game of conspicuous literary manner.
Sources: A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson — original text
The tired survivor and the limits of evidence
The speaker concludes by admitting fatigue and postponing any further reminiscences. An ordinary need for an afternoon nap punctures the grandeur of being the last survivor of an illustrious circle.
The named writers are historical people, but the narrator's participation and invented dialogue should not be cited as documentary evidence of their lives. A factual biography of Johnson would require separate historical sources.
Within Lovecraft's fiction, the work records a mode of humor built from impersonation, literary aspiration and affectionate mockery of an antique identity. Its absence of supernatural menace is itself useful evidence of the range concealed by a bibliography devoted mainly to horror.
Sources: A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson — original text
References
- H. P. Lovecraft Archive — fiction in composition order
Composition dates; question marks and ranges retain the source uncertainty.
- A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson — publication data
- A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson — original text
The fictional narrative is evidence for what the story says, not proof of events in the real world.
At a glance
H. P. Lovecraft
1917
1917, November
The United Amateur, 17, No. 2
Fiction