![Hester thrale by joshua reynolds 1781 small](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Hester_thrale_by_joshua_reynolds_1781_small.jpg)
The ''Thraliana'' was a diary kept by
Hester Thrale
Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi (née Salusbury; later Piozzi; 27 January 1741 or 16 January 1740 – 2 May 1821),Contemporary records, which used the Julian calendar and the Annunciation Style of enumerating years, recorded her birth as 16 January ...
and is part of the genre known as
table talk. Although the work began as Thrale's diary focused on her experience with her family, it slowly changed focus to emphasise various anecdotes and stories about the life of
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...
. The work was used as a basis for Thrale's ''
Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson'', but the ''Thraliana'' remained unpublished until 1942. The anecdotes contained within the work were popular with Thrale's contemporaries but seen as vulgar. Among 20th-century readers, the work was popular, and many literary critics believe that the work is a valuable contribution to the genre and for providing information about Johnson's and her own life.
Background
Hester Thrale, when still Hester Lynch Salusbury, spent her youth writing letters and keeping journals. Her talents at writing won her the respect of her uncles,
Sir Robert Cotton and Sir Thomas Salusbury, who later appointed her their heir.
[Bloom 1998 p. 74] When Thrale was older, she became close to Johnson. It was natural to her to keep a detailed collection of anecdotes and stories of their time together, as of everything she experienced.
[Balderston 1951 p. ix] The two initially bonded after Thrale gave birth to her first child,
Queeney, in 1766.
![Dr-Johnson](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Dr-Johnson.jpg)
However, there were problems between Thrale and Johnson, along with "his defenders" during his life and in criticism since then, over their "gradual estrangement" from each other after the death of her husband.
These problems were then heightened by her marriage to Gabriel Piozzi.
After Johnson's death, Thrale felt isolated because she believed that Johnson's previous friends along with the public as a whole did not accept her, and some went so far as to claim she abandoned Johnson in his final moments.
[Brownley 1985 p. 631] In particular,
James Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (; 29 October 1740 (New Style, N.S.) – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of his friend and older contemporary the Englis ...
, who resented Thrale and felt himself as her literary competitor, began to exploit the falling out between Thrale and Johnson's friends in order to promote his ''
Life of Samuel Johnson
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy tran ...
''.
After the birth of Queeney, Thrale began to document the various moments in her daughter's life in a "baby book" called ''The Children's Book''. The work eventually expanded to include documentation of the whole family and was retitled the ''Family Book''.
To encourage his wife's writing her husband
Henry Thrale
Henry Thrale (1724/1730?–4 April 1781) was a British politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1765 to 1780. He was a close friend of Samuel Johnson. Like his father, he was the proprietor of the large London brewery H. Thrale & Co.
B ...
gave her six blank diary books, with the title ''Thraliana'' on the cover, in 1776. The work was intended as an
Ana,
[Balderston 1951 p. x] which she admits her fascination with in the ''Thraliana'': "I am grown quite mad after these French Anas; Anecdote is in itself so seducing". After searching for English models for writing her Ana, she settled on used
John Selden
John Selden (16 December 1584 – 30 November 1654) was an English jurist, a scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution and scholar of Jewish law. He was known as a polymath; John Milton hailed Selden in 1644 as "the chief of learned ...
's ''Table Talk'',
William Camden
William Camden (2 May 1551 – 9 November 1623) was an English antiquarian, historian, topographer, and herald, best known as author of ''Britannia'', the first chorographical survey of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, and the ''Annal ...
's ''Remains'', and
Joseph Spence's ''Anecdotes'' as her guides. In May 1778, she was given by Johnson a manuscript of Spence's ''Anecdotes'', but her first years of the Ana were written without an exact model.
[Balderston 1951 p. xi]
Before the ''Thraliana'', Thrale kept two sets of anecdotes: the first was devoted to Samuel Johnson and the other for miscellaneous events. She relied on these, along with her memory, to write the early portions of her work.
[Balderston 1951 p. xii] Boswell, when trying to find information for his own work, wrote: "Mr. Thrale told me, I am not sure what day, that there is a Book of ''Johnsoniana'' kept in their Family, in which all Mr. Johnson's sayings and all that they can collect about him is put down ... I must try to get this ''Thralian'' Miscellany, to assist me in writing Mr. Johnson's Life, if Mrs. Thrale does not intend to do it herself." After Johnson's death, Thrale used the ''Thraliana'' to create the ''Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson'' (1786).
[Bloom 1998 p. 75] The manuscript passed through many hands and was owned by A. Edward Newton until his death in autumn 1940. The ''Thraliana'' was eventually published in 1942, and it was produced by the Clarendon Press in England while its editor, Katharine Balderston, was prohibited from travelling across the ocean from Wellesley College because of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
Ana
Thrale explains that her book is not for "diary-keeping in the strict sense"
when she writes on the first page: "It is many Years since Doctor Samuel Johnson advised me to get a little Book, and write in it all the little Anecdotes which might come to my Knowledge, all the Observations I might make or hear; all the Verses never likely to be published, and in fine ev'ry thing which struck me at the Time. Mr Thrale has now treated me with a Repository, - and provided it with the pompous Title of Thraliana; I must endeavour to fill it with Nonsense new and old." These encouraging remarks from Johnson set the theme of the work as it became a new "Johnsoniana" collection. In particular, she transferred her previous notes and documentations about Johnson's life into the collection.
In a 6 September 1777 letter, Johnson told Thrale to be "punctual in annexing the dates. Chronology you know is the eye of history". However, the system of Ana allowed Thrale to group items by theme instead of by topics, like "Odd medical Stories", to organize anecdotes, quotations, and stories.
When Henry Thrale died while Thrale was writing Volume Three, the work became a diary for Thrale to discuss her thoughts and feelings after her loss. This volume soon began to describe Thrale's feelings for Gabriel Piozzi.
Throughout the ''Thraliana'', Thrale examines how others view her, which reveals her anxieties that she had about how she was perceived. This is especially true when she writes: "Life has been to me nothing but a perpetual ''Canvass'' carried on in all parts of the World - not to make ''Friends'' neither - for I have certainly found very few - but to keep off ''Enemies''".
Thrale initially did not want to write in the sixth volume of the ''Thraliana'', but did so because "Johnson said that Pleasure might one day be made from such Nonsense, so I'll e'en finish this ''last'' Volume of Anecdote & store up no more Stuff". However she did not stop journal writing after she finished but continued to write for the remainder of her life.
Critical response
Thrale's anecdotes were popular when they were first published in various works, but many readers initially thought that her "relaxed and natural style" was vulgar.
[Brownley 1985 p. 630] However, Martine Brownley points out that this style helped win over 20th century readers even though the work suffered from "unevenness".
Katherine Balderston regards the work as "what was almost, if not quite, the first English ana".
James Clifford declared that "there is much valuable evidence about the great man," Samuel Johnson, within the ''Thraliana''.
[Clifford 1978 p. 10] He also stated that the work, along with her ''
Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson'', "established her reputation as a bluestocking writer of the late eighteenth century.
Edward Bloom et al. claim that the ''Thraliana'', as with her letters, lays "bare a woman's psychology".
[Bloom 1978 p. 310]
Notes
References
*
Balderston, Katharine C. "Introduction" in ''Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs Hester Lynch Thrale (Later Mrs. Piozzi) 1776-1809.'' Vol. I ed. Katherine C. Balderston, pp. ix-xxxii Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951.
* Bloom, Edward A., Bloom, Lillian D., Klingel, Joan E. "Portrait of a Georgian Lady," ''Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester'' Vol 60, (1978): pp. 305–338.
* Bloom, Harold. "Hester Thrale Piozzi 1741-1821" in ''Women Memoirists'' Vol II, ed. Harold Bloom, pp. 74–76. Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 1998.
* Boswell, James. ''Private papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle''. Vol X, England: Ralph Heyward Islam, 1941.
* Brownley, Martine Watson. "Samuel Johnson and the Printing Career of Hester Lynch Piozzi" ''Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester'' Vol. 67, No. 2 (Spring 1985): pp. 623–640.
* Clifford, James L. "The Daily Diaries of Hester Lynch Piozzi," ''Columbia Library Columns'' Vol. 22, No. 3 (1978): pp. 10–17.
* Johnson, Samuel. ''Letters'' ed G. B. Hill. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892.
* Thrale, Hester. ''Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs Hester Lynch Thrale (Later Mrs. Piozzi) 1776-1809.'' Vol. I ed. Katherine C. Balderston, pp. ix-xxxii Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951.
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1942 books
Literary autobiographies
Works about Samuel Johnson