Young Sam Johnson

By all accounts, Samuel Johnson’s father Michael (1657-1731) was a good bookman, but a bad businessman. His bookshop made him prominent and popular in the Johnsons’ hometown of Lichfield, but his lack of interest in account keeping, overambitious acquisitions, and ill-fated ventures in tanning and parchment-making left him chronically in debt and behind on his taxes. This Bible is an example of Michael Johnson’s work as a binder, a necessary skill for a provincial bookseller. His regular customer Sir William Boothby seems not to have been favorably impressed, however, writing to complain: “Your books do open very ill so that it is troublesome reading pray mend this great fault.”