According to Queeney

According to Queeney is a biographical novel by the English writer Beryl Bainbridge, published in 2001 and longlisted for the Booker Prize that year.

The book covers the last two decades of the life of Samuel Johnson, the lexicographer and essayist, as seen largely through the eyes of Hester Maria Thrale, known in the family as Queeney. Johnson is unwell and out of spirits when his friend Arthur Murphy introduces him to the brewer Henry Thrale and his wife Hester, who invite him to their house at Streatham Park. He becomes a regular guest, and the growing attachment between him and Mrs Thrale is observed by her eldest daughter with a clarity the adults do not have. The novel runs from 1765 to Johnson's death in 1784, and the chapters close with letters that Queeney writes in the following century to a friend about what she saw.

Bainbridge wrote a series of short novels about historical figures, and this one is as much a study of a household watching a famous man as a portrait of Johnson.