The Art of the Eighteenth-Century Obituary

Join Dr Rebecca Bullard to discover what eighteenth-century obituaries can tell us about the world in which Samuel Johnson lived and worked, and how they compare with printed memorials in our own time.

"We ne’er shall look upon his like again! Never on earth did one mortal body encompass such true greatness and such true goodness. The limits of our OBITUARY are too scanty to speak forth half his praise." So the publisher John Nichols lamented the death of his friend, Samuel Johnson, in The Gentleman’s Magazine for December 1784.

The obituary is one of the eighteenth century’s greatest inventions – a product of the age’s fascination with all forms of biography, and a rapidly expanding market for printed news. No one did more to popularise it than Nichols, who was mocked as a ‘death-hunter’ for his pains. Join Dr Rebecca Bullard to discover what eighteenth-century obituaries can tell us about the world in which Samuel Johnson lived and worked, and how they compare with printed memorials in our own time.

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