Swimming With Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale

In 'Swimming with Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale Julia Allen has taken a sideways look at her subject and in so doing has revealed unfamiliar sides of the eponymous characters she uses as guides and commentators. Samuel Johnson does battle with the rough breakers at Brighton as energetically as he did with any of his verbal opponents; and Hester Thrale - herself 'a good water-spaniel' - provides wry observations, notably on what men decided women might decently be allowed to do in that foreign country that is the past. In Part I Allen goes into the medical theories underpinning notions about exercise, the role of the physician, the work of the surgeon, the conditions in which exercise was taken, its place in child-rearing and education, and its e cacy as a remedy for melancholy. Part II comprises chapters on the various sports and forms of exercise associated with Johnson and Mrs Thrale, from boxing and swimming to dancing and coach travel; these include brief lives of the star performers, and eye-witness accounts of the events they took part in. Essentially, however, this is a book for anyone interested in peering into some of the obscurer recesses of eighteenth-century life. Julia Allen read English at Bristol University and has worked as a teacher, librarian, translator and lexicographer. She is the author of 'Samuel Johnson's menagerie' (2002) and in 2009 was the curator for an exhibition at Cambridge University Library jointly commemorating the University's 800th anniversary and the 300th anniversary of Johnson's birth.

Julia Allen read English at Bristol University and has worked as teacher, librarian, translator, lexi-cographer and copy editor. She is the author of Samueal Johnson's Menagerie (2002) and in 2009 curated the Cambridge University Library exhibition jointly commemorating the University's 800th anniversary and the 300th anniversary of Johnson's birth.