JOHNSON, SAMUEL

born Sept. 18, 1709, Lichfield, Staffordshire, Eng. died Dec. 13, 1784, London byname Dr. Johnson English critic, biographer, essayist, poet, and lexicographer, regarded as one of the greatest figures of 18th-century life and letters. Johnson once characterized literary biographies as mournful narratives, and he believed that he lived a life radically wretched. Yet his career can be seen as a literary success story of the sickly boy from the Midlands who by talent, tenacity, and intelligence became the foremost literary figure and the most formidable conversationalist of his time. For future generations, Johnson was synonymous with the later 18th century in England. The disparity between his circumstances and achievement gives his life its especial interest. born Sept. 18, 1709, Lichfield, Staffordshire, Eng. died Dec. 13, 1784, London byname Dr. Johnson English poet, essayist, critic, journalist, lexicographer, and conversationalist, regarded as one of the outstanding figures of 18th-century life and letters. His Dictionary of the English Language (1755) was the first major English dictionary to use illustrative historical quotations. Johnson, the son of a bookseller, was educated at the University of Oxford and set up a school near Lichfield, which was not a success. In 1737 he went to London with a former pupil, David Garrick, and made friends with Richard Savage. His early writings were journalism for the Gentleman's Magazine. He came to public notice with attacks on Robert Walpole's ministry. In 1745 he turned his attention to William Shakespeare, writing Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, and he published his didactic poem The Vanity of Human Wishes in 1749. In 1746 he signed a contract to prepare his Dictionary of the English Language. The Dictionary gave Johnson a great reputation, but he still had to rely on journalism and hack writing for a living. In 1750 his paper The Rambler began to appear, to be followed by his weekly column entitled The Idler. His philosophical tale Rasselas was written in 1759 in order to meet a pressing demand for money. The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1777) shows Johnson's power to lift hackwork to the level of sustained literary criticism. In 1763 Johnson met James Boswell, with whom he formed one of the most famous friendships in literary history. In 1773 they journeyed together through the Highlands of Scotland and to the western islands, and both left entertaining accounts of the trip. In 1765 Johnson's edition of Shakespeare was completed, and in the year of its publication Trinity College, Dublin, conferred the LL.D. degree on him. Brilliant as Johnson was as a writer, he was reportedly even more brilliant as a conversationalist. Additional reading The standard bibliography is William P. Courtney and David Nichol Smith, A Bibliography of Samuel Johnson (1915, reprinted 1984); it is supplemented by R.W. Chapman and Allen T. Hazen, Johnsonian Bibliography: A Supplement to Courtney, in Oxford Bibliographical Society, Proceedings and Papers, vol. 5, pt. 3, p. 117166 (1938, reprinted 1984). James L. Clifford and Donald J. Greene, Samuel Johnson: A Survey and Bibliography of Critical Studies (1970), contains around 4,000 items; it is supplemented by Donald Greene and John A. Vance, A Bibliography of Johnsonian Studies, 19701985 (1987). Recent work can be found in The Age of Johnson (annual); and Johnsonian News Letter (quarterly). Other bibliographic aids include J.D. Fleeman, A Preliminary Handlist of Documents and Manuscripts of Samuel Johnson (1967); Donald Greene, Samuel Johnson's Library: An Annotated Guide (1975); and Helen Louise McGuffie, Samuel Johnson in the British Press, 17491784: A Chronological Checklist (1976).The number of biographical and critical studies of Johnson is enormous and rapidly growing. Among contemporary accounts are James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785), available in many later editions, and The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791), also available in numerous editionsthe best one is ed. by George Birkbeck Hill, rev. and enlarged by L.F. Powell, 6 vol. (193450, reissued 1979); The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, ed. by Frederick A. Pottle, 15 vol. (195081), particularly vol. 2, The Correspondence and Other Papers of James Boswell Relating to the Making of the Life of Johnson, ed. by Marshall Waingrow (1968); James Boswell, James Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. by Marshall Waingrow (1994 ), an edition of the original manuscript; John Hawkins, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1787, reprinted 1974); Hester Lynch Piozzi, Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1786, reprinted 1974); Arthur Murphy, An Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1792, reprinted 1970); and George Birkbeck Hill (ed.), Johnsonian Miscellanies, 2 vol. (1897, reprinted 1966), with many anecdotes as well as selections from the early biographies. O M Brack, Jr., and Robert E. Kelley (eds.), The Early Biographies of Samuel Johnson (1974), reprints fourteen lives. Also of interest are Robert E. Kelley and O M Brack, Jr., Samuel Johnson's Early Biographers (1971); and Mary Hyde, The Impossible Friendship: Boswell and Mrs. Thrale (1972). Two famous essays by Thomas Babington Macaulay, one a review of J.W. Croker's edition of Boswell's Life, Samuel Johnson, The Edinburgh Review (September 1831), also available in his Critical and Historical Essays, Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, vol. 1 (1843), pp. 353407, and the other, Johnson, Samuel, in The Encyclopdia Britannica, 8th ed., vol. 12 (1856), pp. 793803, set the tone for 19th-century denigration of Johnson's work. Johnson's genealogy and other finely sifted information has been assembled by Aleyn Lyell Reade, Johnsonian Gleanings, 11 vol. (190952, reprinted 11 vol. in 10, 1968). Early critical reception is collected in James T. Boulton (ed.), Johnson: The Critical Heritage (1971).Twentieth-century biographies and biographical studies include James L. Clifford, Young Sam Johnson (1955, reissued 1981; also published as Young Samuel Johnson, 1955), and Dictionary Johnson: Samuel Johnson's Middle Years (1979); W. Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson (1977); Thomas Kaminski, The Early Career of Samuel Johnson (1987); John Wain, Samuel Johnson, rev. ed. (1988); Robert DeMaria, Jr., The Life of Samuel Johnson (1993); and Richard Holmes, Dr. Johnson & Mr. Savage (1993).Among general studies are Bertrand H. Bronson, Johnson Agonistes, and Other Essays (1946, reissued 1965); W. Jackson Bate, The Achievement of Samuel Johnson (1955, reissued 1978); Donald Greene, Samuel Johnson, updated ed. (1989); Paul Fussell, Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing (1971, reissued 1986); J.P. Hardy, Samuel Johnson: A Critical Study (1979); Isobel Grundy, Samuel Johnson and the Scale of Greatness (1986); and Pat Rogers, Johnson (1993), a brief work.Special studies include Maurice J. Quinlan, Samuel Johnson: A Layman's Religion (1964); Chester F. Chapin, The Religious Thought of Samuel Johnson (1968); James Gray, Johnson's Sermons: A Study (1972); Charles E. Pierce, Jr., The Religious Life of Samuel Johnson (1983); Nicholas Hudson, Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Thought (1988); Paul K. Alkon, Samuel Johnson and Moral Discipline (1967); John Wiltshire, Samuel Johnson in the Medical World (1991); Gloria Sybil Gross, This Invisible Riot of the Mind: Samuel Johnson's Psychological Theory (1992); Richard B. Schwartz, Samuel Johnson and the New Science (1971), and Daily Life in Johnson's London (1983); Donald Greene, The Politics of Samuel Johnson, 2nd ed. (1990); John Cannon, Samuel Johnson and the Politics of Hanoverian England (1994); J.C.D. Clark, Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion, and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism (1994); Robert Folkenflik, Samuel Johnson, Biographer (1978); David Wheeler (ed.), Domestick Privacies: Samuel Johnson and the Art of Biography (1987); John A. Vance, Samuel Johnson and the Sense of History (1984); Carey McIntosh, The Choice of Life: Samuel Johnson and the World of Fiction (1973); Edward Alan Bloom, Samuel Johnson in Grub Street (1957); Benjamin B. Hoover, Samuel Johnson's Parliamentary Reporting (1953); W.K. Wimsatt, Jr., The Prose Style of Samuel Johnson (1941, reissued 1972); William Edinger, Samuel Johnson and Poetic Style (1977); Thomas M. Curley, Samuel Johnson and the Age of Travel (1976); Robert DeMaria, Jr., Johnson's Dictionary and the Language of Learning (1986); Allen Reddick, The Making of Johnson's Dictionary, 17461773 (1990); and Daisuke Nagashima, Johnson the Philologist (1988).Books on Johnson's criticism include Jean H. Hagstrum, Samuel Johnson's Literary Criticism (1952, reissued 1967); Leopold Damrosch, Jr., The Uses of Johnson's Criticism (1976); Charles Hinnant, Steel for the Mind: Samuel Johnson and Critical Discourse (1994); Arthur Sherbo, Samuel Johnson, Editor of Shakespeare (1956, reprinted 1978); R.D. Stock, Samuel Johnson and Neoclassical Dramatic Theory: The Intellectual Context of the Preface to Shakespeare (1973); G.F. Parker, Johnson's Shakespeare (1989); and Edward Tomarken, Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare: The Discipline of Criticism (1991). Johnson's significant contribution to the law lectures of Robert Chambers is assessed in Robert Chambers and Samuel Johnson, A Course of Lectures on the English Law, ed. by Thomas M. Curley, 2 vol. (1986). Johnson's relation to the visual arts is considered in Paul Alkon and Robert Folkenflik, Samuel Johnson: Pictures and Words (1984); Morris R. Brownell, Samuel Johnson's Attitude to the Arts (1989); and Herman W. Liebert, Portraits of the Author: Lifetime Likenesses of Samuel Johnson, in J. Douglas Stewart and Herman W. Liebert, English Portraits of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1974), pp. 4788. The fullest exhibition catalogue is Kai Kin Yung et al., Samuel Johnson (1984).Original collections of essays include Isobel Grundy (ed.), Samuel Johnson: New Critical Essays (1984); Paul J. Korshin (ed.), Johnson After Two Hundred Years (1986); James Engell (ed.), Johnson and His Age (1984); and Prem Nath (ed.), Fresh Reflections on Samuel Johnson (1987). Robert Folkenflik Major Works: Verse London: A Poem (1738); The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749); Irene: A Tragedy (1749). Prose Marmor Norfolciense (1739); A Compleat Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage (1739); An Account of the Life of Mr. Richard Savage, Son of the Earl Rivers (1744); Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth (1745); The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language (1747); The Rambler, 208 numbers (175052); A Dictionary of the English Language, 2 vol. (1755); The Prince of Abissinia: A Tale, 2 vol. (1759), better known as Rasselas; The Idler (175860); The Plays of William Shakespeare, 8 vol. (1765); The False Alarm (1770); Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland's Islands (1771); The Patriot (1774); Taxation No Tyranny (1775); A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775); Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets, 10 vol. (177981), best known as The Lives of the Poets; Prayers and Meditations, ed. by George Strahan (1785). Editions The Works of Samuel Johnson, 11 vol. (1825, reprinted as Dr. Johnson's Works, 11 vol., 1970), was standard only because it was most cited. It is being replaced by The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson (1958 ). Until superseded, The Lives of the English Poets, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, 3 vol. (1905, reissued 1967), is the standard edition; although J.P. Hardy (ed.), Johnson's Lives of the Poets: A Selection (1971), is preferable for the complete major lives he chooses. Life of Savage, ed. by Clarence Tracy (1971), is the best edition of this work. For the correspondence, The Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. by Bruce Redford, 5 vol. (199294), known as the Hyde Edition, is now the standard. The best one-volume anthology is Donald Greene (ed.), Samuel Johnson (1984). J.D. Fleeman (ed.), The Complete English Poems (1971, reprinted 1982), is a useful collection.