Joseph Johnson (November 15, 1738 – December 20, 1809) was a bookseller and publisher in London with a reputation for publishing controversial works by radical thinkers, including supporters of women's rights, abolitionists, and Dissenters. He also hosted weekly dinners at his house with unconventional thinkers that became a sort of salon for philosophical discussion, known as the 'Johnson Circle'. Johnson's embrace of radical ideas led him to publish works in support of the French Revolution (including critical appraisals of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France), which caused him to come under great pressure from the authorities. He was imprisoned in 1799 for seditious libel, after which he published less controversial works. Nevertheless, Johnson remained a very prominent publisher, perhaps the most prominent in London, for having recognized early the value of publishing inexpensive works for a wide readership. He is remembered particularly for promoting women writers, including Mary Wollstonecraft, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, and Priscilla Wakefield, at a time when they were generally neglected by the reading public.