Author: JOHNSON, Samuel
Biography:
JOHNSON, Samuel (1709-84: ODNB)
The career of Samuel Johnson as a writer of verse was largely over before 1770 and posthumous editions of his Poetical Works in 1785 and later contain only “prior,” previously published material, notably London (1738), The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), and the tragedy Irene (1749). He owes his place in this bibliography to a few pages of occasional verse (added to the 1789 edition) that had been composed or first published after 1770; to his inclusion in a collective publication with Goldsmith (q.v.); and to a new translation of his Latin version of Pope’s (q.v.) Messiah. Johnson was a giant of eighteenth-century literature but he was famous in his time as a prose writer, especially for The Rambler (1750-52), the monumental Dictionary of the English Language (1755), the prose tale Rasselas (1759), an edition of Shakespeare (1765), and The Lives of the Poets (1779-81). He wrote constantly for periodicals, especially GM. His later fame owes a good deal to James Boswell’s colourful Life of him (1791). Born at Lichfield, Staffordshire, on 7 Sept. 1709, he was the elder son of a provincial bookseller, Michael Johnson, and his wife Sarah Ford. Though sickly all his life, with poor eyesight and hearing, he was big and strong and lived to be 75. He was a precocious scholar who made the most of such educational experience as he had at two grammar schools and at Pembroke College, Oxford (matric. Dec. 1728), which he left without a degree after twelve months. (Oxford awarded an MA by diploma in 1755 and a DCL in 1775, Dublin an LL.D. in 1765.) On 7 July 1735 he married a much older widow, Elizabeth (Tetty) Porter, née Jarvis (1689-1752). Johnson failed as a schoolmaster but succeeded where many ambitious young men had failed before, as a writer in London, well connected in the publishing world and appreciated in social circles. Close friends included his ex-pupil David Garrick (q.v.), Edmund Burke, Joshua Reynolds, Charles Burney, and Hester Thrale (later Piozzi, q.v.). He died at his London home on 13 Dec. 1784; the funeral and burial at Westminster Abbey took place on 20 Dec. He left the bulk of an estate valued at £2300 to his servant Francis Barber. (ODNB 17 July 2024; Alumni Oxonienses)
Other Names:
- Johnson