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Charles Johnson (pirate biographer)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Captain Charles Johnson is the author of the 1724 book A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates, though his identity remains a mystery. No record of a captain by this name exists, and circumstantial evidence suggests "Charles Johnson" was really Daniel Defoe writing under a pen name, but this is unproven. His work was influential in shaping popular conceptions of pirates, and is the prime source for the biographies of many well known pirates.[1]
Johnson's identity is unknown. He demonstrates a knowledge of the sailor's speech and life, suggesting he could have been an actual sea captain, but he could have been a professional writer using a pseudonym. If this is true, the name was perhaps chosen to reflect the playwright Charles Johnson, who had an unsuccessful play with The Successful Pyrate in 1712, which glamorized the career of Henry Avery and had been something of a scandal for seeming to praise a criminal.[2] Following it, however, many authors would rush forward with biographies and catalogs of criminals, including catalogs of highwaymen and prostitutes. By this theory, the pseudonymous "Charles Johnson" of the pirate catalog was merely taking part in a burgeoning industry in criminal biography. In 1934 John Robert Moore, an American scholar of Daniel Defoe, announced his theory that Johnson was really Daniel Defoe writing pseudonymously. He eventually published Defoe in the Pillory and Other Studies, in which he compared the style and contents of A General History to Defoe's works, noting that the frequent meditations on morality are similar to Defoe's work, and that Defoe wrote several other works on pirates.[3] Moore's study, and his reputation as a Defoe scholar, was so convincing that most libraries recataloged the A General History under Defoe's name. However, in 1988 scholars P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owen attacked the theory in The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe, in which they point out that there is no documentary evidence linking Johnson to Defoe, and that there are discrepancies between A General History and Defoe's other works.[4]
The original publisher, Charles Rivington, emphasized the fact that the catalogue (largely assembled from Admiralty Court records and a few interviews) included stories of "the remarkable ACTIONS and ADVENTURES of the two Female Pyrates, Mary Read and Anne Bonny."[5] A second edition, vastly enlarged and most likely assembled from writings by other authors than the original, came out within a few months. A German and Dutch translation were published in 1725.[6] These German and Dutch language versions greatly played up the salaciousness of the accounts of "Amazon" pirates.
- ^ Cordingly, Under the Black Flag, p. xix.
- ^ Robert Dryden, Hillyer College, University of Hartford. "The Successful Pyrate. A Play. As it is acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane." The Literary Encyclopedia. 23 Oct. 2006. The Literary Dictionary Company. 3 June 2007. [1]
- ^ Cordingly, Under the Black Flag, p. xix–xx.
- ^ Cordingly, Under the Black Flag, p. xx.
- ^ op. cit. Druett 105
- ^ Druett 105
- Cordingly, David. Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995.
- Druett, Joan. She Captains: Heroines and Hellions of the Sea. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.