Namangan davlat universiteti ingliz filologiyasi fakulteti amaliy ingliz tili kafedrasi

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 born 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 
“Dictionary of the English Language” (1755) is noted for its scholarly 
definitions of words and the use of excellent quotations to illustrate 
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 literary criticism as a form of literature. Johnson also wrote articles, reviews, 
essays, and two satires, “London” (1738) and “The Vanity of Human Wishes” (1749) both based on 
juvenal, these show what his powerful mind, his grave moral outlook and his incisive phrasing 
could acieve. 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. 
Johnson’s friends (The Johnson circle) were the most important writers of the late 1700s. 
They included Oliver Goldsmith; Edmund Burke, who stood high in the councils of the nation. 
Burke’s main work is to be found in a series of political pamphlets, mainly delivered in the form of 
speeches. Burke in his prose always has the spoken word in mind, and, though he argues closely, he 
has the audience in view. This contrast with the audience gave him the eloquence and the passion 
which entered into some of his best-known passages (“On American Taxation”, 1774, “On 
Conciliation with the Colonies”, 1775), Burke’s oratory became a part of English history. Special 
tribute should be given to Johnson’s biographer, James Boswell (1740-1795), whose “Life of 
Johnson” was published in 1791. The publication in the middle of the twentieth century of 
Boswell’s own journals and diaries has established him as a major writer, independently of the 
“Life”. It was the Jonson of the later years that he recorded, working from minute records of his 
sayings, and his mannerism, and with a realistic art that has no parallel. The capacity, the wit, and 
the downrightness of Johnson, along with his often kindly and always devout approach to life, are 
the elements of the portrait which Boswell has created, and without his biographer Johnson would 
be a lesser man. The list should also include an outstanding playwright of the time, Richard 
Brinsley Sheridan. 

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