Thraliana

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. 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. The two initially bonded after Thrale gave birth to her first child, Queeney, in 1766. In particular, James Boswell, 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. 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's Table Talk, William Camden'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. 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. 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). 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. ==Ana==

Thrale explains that her book is not for "diary-keeping in the strict sense" 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. 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. 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. However, Martine Brownley points out that this style helped win over 20th century readers even though the work suffered from "unevenness". 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. ==Notes==