Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) was born on 18 September 1709 in Lichfield, Staffordshire, the son of a bookseller. He was afflicted from birth — probably by Tourette’s syndrome, scrofula (tuberculosis of the lymph glands, for which he was “touched” by Queen Anne as a child), and near-blindness in one eye. He was also prodigiously intelligent: he devoured his father’s stock, attended Pembroke College, Oxford (1728–1729) but was forced to leave for lack of funds, and spent years in provincial obscurity before arriving in London in 1737 with his former pupil David Garrick, who would become the greatest actor of the age.

Life and Career

Johnson’s early London years were desperate. He worked as a hack journalist for The Gentleman’s Magazine, wrote parliamentary reports (invented rather than recorded, since reporting was forbidden), and produced London (1738), a poem imitated from Juvenal that announced a major voice. The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), his greatest poem, is one of the finest moral meditations in English.

The Dictionary of the English Language (1755), nine years in the making, established Johnson’s reputation permanently. Compiled almost single-handedly (with six assistants for the clerical work), it was the first comprehensive English dictionary and remained the standard until the Oxford English Dictionary in the late nineteenth century. Its definitions are famous for their clarity, wit, and occasional prejudice (“oats: a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people”).

Rasselas (1759), a philosophical tale about a prince’s search for happiness, was written in a single week to pay for his mother’s funeral. The Idler and The Rambler, his periodical essay series, established him as the leading moralist of the age. The edition of Shakespeare (1765), with its magnificent Preface, set new standards for literary editing. The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779–1781) is his critical masterpiece — a series of biographical and critical essays that remain among the finest literary criticism in English.

In 1763 Johnson met James Boswell, the young Scottish lawyer whose Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) would become the most famous biography in the English language and ensure Johnson’s immortality. The relationship was extraordinary: Boswell — vain, insecure, alcoholic, sexually incontinent, and brilliantly observant — recorded Johnson’s conversation with a fidelity that brings the eighteenth century to life as no other document does.

Johnson was the centre of “the Club” (later the Literary Club), whose members included Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith, Edward Gibbon, Joshua Reynolds, Adam Smith, and David Garrick. He received a royal pension of £300 per year in 1762, which freed him from hack work, and an honorary doctorate from Oxford in 1775. He died on 13 December 1784 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Major Works and Themes

Johnson’s work is unified by a concern with moral truth — the obligation to see life as it is, to resist vanity and self-deception, and to find consolation in duty, friendship, and religious faith. He was a devout Anglican haunted by the fear of damnation, a depressive who fought melancholy with conversation and industry, and a moralist whose severity was always tempered by compassion.

The Dictionary is not merely a reference work but a literary monument: Johnson’s definitions, drawn from extensive quotation of English literature, constitute a portrait of the language at its richest moment. The Vanity of Human Wishes surveys the disappointments of ambition across history with a grandeur that rivals the Roman poets Johnson imitated. Rasselas is a philosophical fable whose quiet conclusion — “nothing is concluded” — is as honest as anything in eighteenth-century literature.

Critical Reception and Legacy

Johnson was the literary dictator of his age — his pronouncements on writers and writing carried absolute authority. His reputation survived the Romantic reaction (Hazlitt admired him even while rejecting his critical principles) and the modernist indifference to eighteenth-century literature. Today he is recognised not only as a great critic and moralist but as one of the great personalities of English letters — the man behind the quotations, whose wit, compassion, and melancholy make him one of the most human figures in literary history.

Key Works

• London (1738)
• The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749)
• The Rambler (1750–1752)
• A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
• Rasselas (1759)
• The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779–1781)

Collecting Johnson

Samuel Johnson is one of the most important eighteenth-century collecting authors, with the Dictionary as the centrepiece.

A Dictionary of the English Language (1755, J. and P. Knapton, London) was published in two large folio volumes. The first edition is a substantial physical object; complete sets in contemporary binding bring $30,000–$100,000 depending on condition. The work was issued in various bindings and states; the most desirable copies are in full contemporary calf. Individual volumes appear more frequently at lower prices.

Rasselas (1759) was published by Dodsley in two volumes. First editions bring $2,000–$8,000. The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) first editions are scarce and bring $3,000–$10,000.

The Lives of the Poets (1779–1781) was published in multiple volumes as prefatory lives to a collection of English poetry. Sets of the Lives in first edition bring $1,000–$5,000.

Johnson autograph material is genuinely rare and commands high prices. His letters — roughly 1,500 are known — are collected by institutions and private collectors alike. Letters bring $5,000–$30,000 depending on content and recipient. The major archive is the Hyde Collection, now at Harvard’s Houghton Library.