Anna Williams

Anna Williams was Dr Johnson’s companion of 30 years. She lived with him in his house in Gough Square from 1752 and at his later Fleet Street residences until her death in 1783—the exception being his six years at Staple Inn, but she lived nearby, and he visited her every evening.

Anna Williams was a woman of remarkable resilience, despite the hardships life had dealt her. Blind and living in poverty, she was also a highly intelligent poet, fiercely independent and not shy of an argument. Her intellectual prowess was such that she could engage in deep, meaningful conversations with Samuel Johnson, impressing him with her wit and insight. Johnson greatly admired her ‘steady fortitude,’ especially in the face of ‘forty years of misery.’

Warmth of their Friendship

Their bond was one of affection and mutual respect, so much so that Johnson referred to her as a sister and mourned her death, just 14 months before his own. The warmth of their friendship was also reflected in the amount of time Johnson spent in her company. A mutual friend, Frances Reynolds—sister of the famous portrait artist Sir Joshua Reynolds—fondly remembered how, during his visits, Johnson would ‘whirl her about on the steps.’

Herself a highly accomplished artist, Dr Johnson’s House proudly displays a portrait of Anna Williams by Frances Reynolds, where she is shown with a calm and dignified expression.

Anna William's Father

Before knowing Samuel Johnson, Anna Williams moved to London with her father, Zachariah Williams, a physician, scientist, and amateur inventor of Italian descent. Born in Rosemarket, Pembrokeshire, in 1706, Anna was clearly very bright and received an unusually advanced education from him, encompassing not only the arts and sciences but also proficiency in French and Italian—an uncommon level of learning for a girl of her time.

In London, Zachariah hoped to secure financial backing for his research into a method of determining longitude at sea. Such an innovation was of great national importance, as accurate maritime navigation was a major concern for the British government. The Board of Longitude, established in 1714, offered substantial rewards—up to £20,000 (equivalent to millions today)—for a practical solution. Despite years of effort, Zachariah failed to convince the authorities of the efficacy of his designs, leaving the pair in financial distress.

Zachariah, elderly and increasingly frail, became bedridden, while Anna, suffering from cataracts at a young age, gradually lost her sight and was permanently blinded in both eyes following surgery around the age of 30. Struggling with poverty and visual impairment, she nonetheless continued her intellectual pursuits.

Johnson’s wife, Tetty, had come to know Anna Williams well and, upon her death, asked Johnson to take care of her. Johnson also took on Zachariah’s scientific casework, writing up his ideas and depositing them in Oxford’s Bodleian library, ensuring that his work would be preserved. On his death Johnson commemorated the inventor’s talent and ambition and called him ‘worthy to have ended life with better fortune’.

Johnson supported Anna financially for the rest of her life, and she returned this act of kindness by insisting on taking on the role of housekeeper in his household. Their friendship was at the heart of their relationship, however, and was of great importance to them both.

Tea with Johnson

When the pair lived on opposite sides of Fleet Street, James Boswell (Johnson’s biographer) records that ‘he every night drank tea with her before he went home, however late it might be, and she always sat up for him’. Williams was able to pour the tea without spilling any despite her visual impairment by feeling the outside of the cup. Boswell records this detail and notes how privileged he was to join Johnson at the tea table with Anna as he was being invited into the most private of Johnson’s domestic space – though he also informs us ‘that she was of a peevish temper’.

Anna Williams's vocation was poetry, but, like her father, she did not achieve the level of success that might have matched her talent, either in her lifetime or in posterity. While her poetry did not attain widespread fame, it is important not to dismiss her achievements.

One of Williams’s couplets reads: ‘For me, contented with a humble state | 'Twas ne'er my care, or fortune, to be great.’ Yet, by all accounts, she was not a contented person—she could be argumentative, and Johnson believed her discontent stemmed from envy of the affection he showed others in the household, principally Francis Barber. This tension is part of what makes her so compelling.

In any case, Johnson supported her literary ambitions, helping to publish Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (1766) under her name. The volume was a collaborative effort, containing Johnson’s revisions of her work alongside contributions from him and others. Even before her association with Johnson, Williams had translated and published a French biography of the Life of the Roman Emperor Julian. Later, while living in his household, she conceived an ambitious project—a philosophical dictionary—but sadly it was never completed.

Domestic Circle

It is as a fractious member of Johnson’s later household that Williams truly comes into her own. Johnson’s boundless generosity had created a bohemian and often volatile domestic circle. One biographer records Johnson returning home from an evening’s conversation at a tavern ‘with the dread of finding it a scene of discord, and of having his ears filled with the complaints of Mrs. Williams of Frank’s neglect of his duty and inattention to the interests of his master, and of Frank against Mrs. Williams, for the authority she assumed over him, and exercised with an unwarrantable severity. It was even suggested that Levet would sometimes insult Johnson and that Mrs. Williams, in her paroxysms of rage, has been known to drive him from her presence.’ But the discord in Gough Square must have been less than in later years when Johnson was also supporting Elizabeth Desmoulins (the daughter of his godfather) and her daughter; also Poll Carmichael (possibly a former prostitute); and Barber and his wife and two young children. As Johnson was to write to Hester Thrale in 1778 in a much-quoted passage, ’Williams hates everybody. Levet hates Desmoulins and does not love Williams. Desmoulins hates them both. Poll loves none of them.’

This domestic crossfire finds an afterlife in Human Wishes, Samuel Beckett’s unfinished play about Johnson. In the surviving fragment, Anna Williams is at the centre of the scene—complaining, insulting, and sensing what the others are doing. Her speech is relentless, unsettling, and impossible to ignore.

Despite the often discombobulated domestic setting, Johnson clearly admired and treasured Anna Williams, and was bereft when she passed away. Her life, achievements, and strong-willed personality live on in our celebration of her here in 17 Gough Square, where she and Johnson first lived together.

Isaac Lucia