Samuel Johnson 1709/1784

Boswell’s Life presents a picture of Johnson that is at least life-size, and Johnson was a huge man.  Perhaps part of his future was shaped by his being the son of a Lichfield bookseller.  Or perhaps by his contracting scrofula when he was barely out of infancy.  The disease impaired his eyesight and left his face horribly marred.  He attended Oxford but did not receive a degree because a family financial crises recalled him to Lichfield.  When he was 26 he married a widow considerably older than himself.  He remained devoted to her for many years after her death in 1752.

For a while he operated a private school but when that failed he went to London with one of his pupils, David Garrick, who was destined to become the greatest actor of his day.  After doing some periodical writing and publishing several works independently among them London (1738), he issued the plan for his great Dictionary, a work which he finally finished in 1755.  While working on the Dictionary he continued to write and in 1750 started the Rambler, which ran for two years.  Publication of the Dictionary won him a leading place among English men of letters.  From 1758 to 1760 he wrote the “Idler” essays for the Universal Chronicle. In 1765 he completed his second extended project, the editing of Shakespeare’s works.  In 1763 he met Boswell and in 1764 founded the Literary Club, which numbered among its members Goldsmith, Garrick and Boswell.  Johnson’s trip to the Hebrides with Boswell in 1773 resulted in the publication of his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775).  From 1777 to 1781 he was engaged in his third and last extended project writing The Lives of the English Poets.