High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Joseph Johnson (15 November 1738 – 20 December 1809) was an influential 18th-century London bookseller and publisher. His publications covered a wide variety of genres and a broad spectrum of opinions on important issues. Johnson is best known for publishing the works of radical thinkers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, and Joel Barlow, as well as religious dissenters such as Joseph Priestley, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, and Gilbert Wakefield.