Johnson, Samuel

Johnson, Samuel, English author

Johnson, Samuel, 1709–84, English author, b. Lichfield. The leading literary scholar and critic of his time, Johnson helped to shape and define the Augustan Age. He was equally celebrated for his brilliant and witty conversation. His rather gross appearance and manners were viewed tolerantly, if not with a certain admiration.

Early Life and Works

The son of a bookseller, Johnson excelled at school in spite of illness (he suffered the effects of scrofula throughout his life) and poverty. He entered Oxford in 1728 but was forced to leave after a year for lack of funds. He sustained himself as a bookseller and schoolmaster for the next six years, during which he continued his wide reading and published some translations. In 1735 he married Elizabeth Porter, a widow 20 years his senior, and remained devoted to her until her death in 1752.

Johnson settled in London in 1737 and began his literary career in earnest. At first he wrote primarily for Edward Cave's Gentleman's Magazine—poetry and prose on subjects literary and political. His poem "London," published anonymously in 1738, was praised by Pope and won Johnson recognition in literary circles. His Life of Savage (1744) is a bitter portrait of corruption in London and the miseries endured by writers. Also of note are The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and his essays in the periodical The Rambler (1750–52).

Later Life and Works

Johnson's first work of lasting importance, and the one that permanently established his reputation in his own time, was his Dictionary of the English Language (1755), the first comprehensive lexicographical work on English ever undertaken. Rasselas, a moral romance, appeared in 1759, and The Idler, a collection of his essays, in 1761. Although Johnson enjoyed great literary acclaim, he remained close to poverty until a government pension was granted to him in 1762. The following year was marked by his meeting with James Boswell, whose famous biography presents Johnson in exhaustive and fascinating detail, often recreating his conversations verbatim.

In 1764 Johnson and Joshua Reynolds founded "The Club" (known later as The Literary Club). Its membership included Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, David Garrick, and Boswell. The brilliance of this intellectual elite was, reportedly, dazzling, and Dr. Johnson (he had received a degree in 1764) was its leading light. His witty remarks are remembered to this day. He was a master not only of the aphorism—e.g., his definition of angling as "a stick and a string, with a worm on one end and a fool on the other"—but also of the quick, unexpected retort, as when, while listening with displeasure to a violinist, he was told that the feat being performed was very difficult: "Difficult," replied Johnson, "I wish it had been impossible!"

In 1765 Johnson met Henry and Hester Thrale, whose friendship and hospitality he enjoyed until Thrale's death and Mrs. Thrale's remarriage. In that same year Johnson's long-heralded edition of Shakespeare appeared. Its editorial principles served as a model for future editions, and its preface and critical notes are still highly valued. In the 1770s Johnson wrote a series of Tory pamphlets. His political conservatism was based upon a profound skepticism as to the perfectibility of human nature. Although personally generous and compassionate, he held that a strict social order is necessary to save humanity from itself.

In 1773 he toured the Hebrides with Boswell and published his account of the tour in 1775. Johnson's Lives of the Poets (1779–1781), his last major work, comprises ten small volumes of acute criticism, characterized, as is all of Johnson's work, by both classical values and sensitive perception. Dr. Johnson, as he is universally known, was England's first full-dress man of letters, and his mind and personality helped to create the traditions that have guided English taste and criticism.

Bibliography

Besides the classic biography by Boswell, see biographies by J. W. Krutch (1944), J. L. Clifford (1955), Sir John Hawkins (1787; ed. by B. Davis, 1961), D. Greene (1970), W. J. Bate (1977), and R. DeMaria, Jr. (1993); critical studies by W. J. Bate (1955), R. B. Schwartz (1971), P. Quennell (1973), J. T. Boulton, ed. (1978), P. Fussell (1986), N. Hudson (1988), and G. S. Gross (1992); H. Hitchings, Defining the World (2005); R. DeMaria, Jr., and G. J. Kolb, ed., Johnson on the English Language (2005); J. L. Clifford, Johnsonian Studies, 1887–1950 (1951; supplement, 1962); J. L. Clifford and D. J. Greene, A Survey and Bibliography of Critical Studies (1970); D. Greene and J. A. Vance, Bibliography of Johnsonian Studies, 1970–1985 (1987).

---

Johnson, Samuel, American clergyman, educator, and philosopher

Johnson, Samuel, 1696–1772, American clergyman, educator, and philosopher, b. Guilford, Conn., grad. Collegiate School (now Yale), 1714; father of William Samuel Johnson. He became a Congregationalist minister, but in 1722 joined the Church of England. In 1724 he opened the first Anglican church in Connecticut at Stratford, remaining its minister until 1754, when he became the first president of an Anglican institution, King's College (now Columbia), in New York City. He resigned in 1763 to return to Stratford. A friend and correspondent of the English philosopher George Berkeley, Johnson became the principal exponent in America of Berkeleian idealism. His chief work was Ethica (1746), republished in an enlarged edition by Benjamin Franklin as Elementa Philosophica (1752).

Bibliography

See H. and C. Schneider, ed., Samuel Johnson … His Career and His Writings (4 vol., 1929, repr. 1972); B. Redford, ed., The Letters of Samuel Johnson (2 vol., 1994); biography by E. L. Pennington (1938); study by J. J. Ellis (1973).

---

Johnson, Samuel

 known as Dr. Johnson

(born Sept. 18, 1709, Lichfield, Staffordshire, Eng.—died Dec. 13, 1784, London) British man of letters, one of the outstanding figures of 18th-century England. The son of a poor bookseller, he briefly attended Oxford University. He moved to London after the failure of a school he and his wife had started. He wrote for periodicals and was hired to catalog the great library of the earl of Oxford. In 1755, after eight years of labour, he produced his monumental Dictionary of the English Language (1755), the first great English dictionary, which brought him fame. He continued to write for such periodicals as The Gentleman's Magazine and The Universal Chronicle, and he almost single-handedly wrote and edited the biweekly The Rambler (1750–52). He also wrote plays, none of which succeeded on the stage. In 1765 he produced a critical edition of William Shakespeare with a famous preface that did much to establish Shakespeare as the centre of the literary canon. His travel writings include A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775). His Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, 10 vol. (1779–81), was a significant critical work. A brilliant conversationalist, he helped found the Literary Club (c. 1763), which became famous for its members of distinction, including David Garrick, Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith, and Joshua Reynolds. His aphorisms helped make him one of the most frequently quoted of English writers. The biography of Johnson written by his contemporary James Boswell is one of the most admired biographies of all time.

---

Johnson, Samuel (1822–82) Protestant religious leader, author; born in Salem, Mass. A physician's son, he graduated from Harvard and Harvard Divinity School, and in collaboration with a friend, he published a hymnal in 1848. Initially a Unitarian, he became minister of the Free Church in Lynn, Mass. He opposed slavery, was a mystic and poet, and in the 1870s he published a series of scholarly studies of Oriental religions.

---

Johnson, Samuel

(1709–1784) literary scholar, creator of first comprehensive lexicographical work of English. [Br. Hist.: EB, V: 591]

See : Lexicography

---

Johnson, Samuel

Born Sept. 18, 1709, in Lichfield; died Dec. 13, 1784, in London. English critic, lexicographer, essayist, and poet.

In his philosophical novella Rasselas (1759; Russian translation, 1795), Johnson explores the dichotomy between the pursuit of happiness and the possibility of its actual attainment. His Dictionary of the English Language (1755) was a valuable addition to linguistic studies of the period. His foreword to an edition of Shakespeare (1765) and his book Lives of the English Poets (1779-81) were important contributions to the development of English literary criticism. His friend J. Boswell colorfully depicted Johnson in The Life of Samuel Johnson (1792).

WORKS

The Works, vols. 1-12. London, 1801.
Works, vols. 1-16. New York, 1903.
A Dictionary of the English Language, new edition. London, 1883. Lives of the English Poets, vols. 1-2. London-Toronto-New York [1925].

REFERENCES

Istoriia angliiskoi literdtury, vol. 1, issue 2. Moscow-Leningrad, 1945.
Boswell, J. The Life of Samuel Johnson, vols. 1-3. London, 1938.
Bate, W. J. Achievement of SamuelJohnson. New York, 1955.
Courtney, W. P. A Bibliography of Samuel Johnson. Oxford, 1925.