Dr. Samuel Johnson was born in 1709 in Lichfield, England to a poor but intelligent bookseller. He struggled with physical deformities and poverty throughout his life. At age 25, he married an older woman and started a failed private school with her dowry. Later in life, he became famous for his English Dictionary published in 1755 and Lives of the Poets published in 1781, which provided biographies and critical reviews of English poets. He also wrote poems, essays, pamphlets, and periodicals throughout his career. Dr. Johnson died in 1784 and made significant contributions to the study of English literature and language through his scholarly works.

1. Life and works of Dr. Johnson Prepared
by Dipti Vaghela

2.  He was born in Lichfield, in
1709.
 He was the son of a small
bookseller, a poor man,
but intelligent and fond of
literature.
 From his childhood
Johnson had to struggle
against physical deformity
and disease. Before
finishing his course he had
to leave the university on
account of his poverty.

3.  At twenty five years he married a woman old
enough to be his mother,- a genuine love match,
he called it, and with her dowry they started a
private school together, which was a dismal
failure.
 Then, without money or influential friends, he left
his home and wife. Then he earned a penny by
writing prefaces, reviews and translations.
 He died in 1784.

4.  The English Dictionary (1755) : The two
things which belong among the things
‘worthy to be remembered’ are his
dictionary and his ‘lives of the Poets’. Both
are valuable, not as literature but rather as a
study of literature. The Dictionary, as the
first ambitious attempt at an English lexicon,
is extremely valuable.

5.  Lives of the Poets (1781) : It is the simplest
and most readable of his literary works. It
comprising short biographies and critical
appraisals of 52 poets, most of whom lived
during the eighteenth century. As biographies,
however, they are excellent reading, and we
owe to them some of our best known pictures
of the early English poets.
 Poems: Messiah, The Vanity of Human
Wishes, London

6.  Essays, pamphlets, periodicals, sermons:
1732–33 Birmingham Journal
 1747Plan for a Dictionary of the English
Language
 1750–52 The Rambler
 1753–54The Adventurer
 1756Universal Visiter
 1756-The Literary Magazine,
 1758–60The Idler
 1770The False Alarm

7.  Reference
 The History of English literature by William J.
Long.