Background
She was born to the Review Samuel Reynolds and his wife Theophilia in Plympton, Devon.
She was born to the Review Samuel Reynolds and his wife Theophilia in Plympton, Devon.
Johnson and Jane Squire are the only two women known to have done southern lieutenant was not considered an appropriate subject for early modern women especially given its financial, maritime, and government dimensions. The two would later quarrel over Joshua"s lack of piety and over her husband"s precarious financial situation and eventual bankruptcy.
Their other siblings included the author Mary Palmer and painter Frances Reynolds.
The Astronomy and Geography of the Created World, her fourth pamphlet published in 1785, included a short reference to longitude. The pamphlet ended with the claim "that if the palm for finding the longitude, is not given to the author of the Explanation of the Vision to Ezikiel it will never be given to another".
The modern attribution of the Ezekiel pamphlet to Johnson has only recently revealed that the author of the 1785 work was a rare female longitude-seeker, as she even remained anonymous when sending it to the Board of in 1786 in the hope of a reward. She was unsuccessful, and the pamphlet and letter were later catalogued by the Astronomer Royal George Airy in a volume of Board of correspondence which he entitled Irrational Astronomical Theories in 1858.
However, it was not the only early modern pamphlet to address both religion and longitude.
Elizabeth Johnson died in Great Torrington, Devon in 1800.