English literature the book is designed to acquaint students with the main outlines

Samuel Johnson

(1709 - 1784)

The second half of the eighteenth century is often called the Age of Johnson. It was named so after Samuel Johnson, whose powerful personality and long literary career, made him the dominating literary figure of the century, from about 1750 until his death in 1784. He was a critic, poet, playwright, lexicographer, essayist, and biographer. Johnson may not have been the greatest writer of his time, but his conservative values and his deep sensibility reflected the age and a profound impact on it.

Samuel Johnson was bom in the northern cathedral town of Litchfield, where his father ran a small bookstore. The family

was poor, and his father’s lack of money forced Johnson to leave Oxford University without taking a degree. After he left Oxford, he earned his living with a number of teaching and journalism jobs, none of which were a financial success and none of which could satisfy his literary ambitions. However, by the 1740s he began to produce works of considerable importance.

Johnson’s literary achievements are remarkable. His “Dictio­ nary of the English Language” (1755) is noted for its scholarly definitions of words and the use of excellent quotations to illus­ trate the definitions. No one has equaled him in describing clearly to the English people what the words in their language really mean. In his “The Lives of the English Poets” (1779-1781) Johnson critically examined the work of 52 poets from Cowley to Gray and did much to establish literaiy criticism as a form of literature. Johnson also wrote articles, reviews, essays, and two satires, “London” (173 8) and “The Vanity of Human Wi shes” (1749) show what his powerful mind, his grave moral outlook and his incisive phrasing could achieve. His prose work “Rasselas” (1759), though nominally an Abyssinian narrative, employs the story only for the philosophical argument, which is a trenchant attack on people who seek an easy path to happiness, actually an attack upon eigh­ teenth-century optimism.