The title of my book, "Into Distant Countries," comes from this passage by James Boswell in his "Life of Johnson" "He [Johnson] talked with uncommon animation of travelling into distant countries; that the mind was enlarged by it."
Part One of my book contains travel essays written by me over a period of years. Travel has been a joy of my life.Johnson was so right when he said of travel, "that the mind was enlarged by it."
Yet Johnson was an infrequent traveler. With Boswell he had toured the Hebrides, and with his dear friends, Hester and Henry Thrale, visited Wales, and in 1775, at age 66, spent two months with them in Paris.
There, writes Walter Jackson Bate in "Samuel Johnson," he watched the King and Queen of France dine at Fontainebleau, saw a rhinoceros in the Royal Menagerie, and observed the law courts, porcelain works at Sèvres and the Gobelin tapestry factory.
He would have loved to visit Italy with the Thrales - "A man who has not been in Italy is always conscious of an inferiority"- and even India and "the wall of China," but this was not to be. When their only surviving son died at age nine, his friends lost their zeal to travel abroad.
Part Two of my book contains travel essays of a metaphoric nature - not actual trips, but personal journeys as I call them -taken by me into other worlds: the worlds of literature, opera, social justice and teaching.
While Johnson's travels were limited, when it came to personal journeys, like his writing of the "Dictionary of the English Language," a nine year undertaking of total devotion, he was a colossus, far extending the reaches of the human mind.
About the Author: William J. Dean, a graduate of Harvard College and Columbia Law School, is a lawyer, writer and civic participant.
As a lawyer, he has been deeply involved in the life of New York City, serving as executive director of Volunteers of Legal Service, an organization providing pro bono civil legal services to benefit poor people in New York.
As a volunteer, he has served as chairman of The Correctional Association of New York, a civic organization with statutory authority to visit and report on conditions in New York State prisons; as chairman of The New York Society Library, the oldest library in the city, having been founded in 1754, and for thirteen years as the Wednesday night driver for the Coalition for the Homeless food van.
In 2011 he was the recipient of the Brooke Russell Astor Award presented by The New York Public Library, an award honoring a person "who is relentless in his or her dedication to the City and who has contributed substantially to its enrichment."
Hundreds of his personal essays on a wide range of subjects have been published in leading newspapers. In 2013, a collection of 83 of his New York City essays were published under the title, "My New York, A Life in the City." (amazon.com)
He was introduced to the world of travel by his mother, Vera Micheles Dean, a prominent writer, editor, lecturer and professor in the field of international relations, with visits to India and the newly independent countries of West and East Africa. Over the years, he has been privileged to travel to many countries of the world.
