WorkJames Boswell

The Life of Samuel Johnson

James Boswell (1740–1795) · London: Charles Dilly, 1791

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Documented 1845

Books

Selected engagements, in chronological order.

Totals count documented engagements, once at the earliest witness. How we count →

Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this work is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →

When Fuller engaged with this work

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence

III. Self-Directed

IV. Transcendentalist

V. New York1record

VI. Europe

✦. Memoirs (1852)

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

1845—

Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Life of Johnson II, 454–455

quoted · read

“Dr. Johnson's one piece of advice should be written on every door — "Clear your mind of cant.”

Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.

Fuller quotes Samuel Johnson's famous saying in a footnote: 'Dr. Johnson's one piece of advice should be written on every door — "Clear your mind of cant."' Johnson spoke these words to Boswell on 15 May 1783; recorded in Boswell's Life of Johnson (1791), Vol. II, p. 454. The full Johnsonian text: 'My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.' The same footnote goes on to mention Byron's appropriation of the advice and then Sterling's emendation.