Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 [O.S.

7 September] – 13 December 1784), often referred to as Dr. Johnson, is an English author who makes lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer.

Johnson is a devout Anglican and committed Tory, and has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history".

He is also the subject of "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature": James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.

(Bate, Walter Jackson (1955), The Achievement of Samuel Johnson, Oxford: Oxford University Press) Johnson was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, and atte Pembroke College, Oxford for just over a year, before his lack of funds forces him to leave.

After working as a teacher he moves to London, where he begins to write miscellaneous pieces for The Gentleman's Magazine.

His early works include the biography The Life of Richard Savage, the poems "London" and "The Vanity of Human Wishes", and the play Irene.

After nine years of work, Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language is published in 1755; it has a far-reaching effect on Modern English and has been described as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship."

(Bate, Walter Jackson (1955), The Achievement of Samuel Johnson, Oxford: Oxford University Press) This work brings Johnson popularity and success.

Until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years later, Johnson's is viewed as the pre-eminent British dictionary.

His later works include essays, an influential annotated edition of William Shakespeare's plays, and the widely read tale Rasselas.

In 1763, he befriends James Boswell, with whom he later travels to Scotland; Johnson describes their travels in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland.

Towards the end of his life, he produces the massive and influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, a collection of biographies and evaluations of 17th- and 18th-century poets.

Johnson has a tall and robust figure.

His odd gestures and tics are confusing to some on their first encounter with him.

Boswell's Life, along with other biographies, document Johnson's behavior and mannerisms in such detail that they have informed the posthumous diagnosis of Tourette syndrome (TS) a condition not defined or diagnosed in the 18th century.

After a series of illnesses he dies on the evening of 13 December 1784, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

In the years following his death, Johnson begins to be recognized as having had a lasting effect on literary criticism, and even as the only great critic of English literature.

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