Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) was a literary giant of 18th-century England. Born in Lichfield, Johnson came south to London as a young man and by the sheer force of his genius became the “literary dictator” of his era. He singlehandedly wrote the first modern dictionary of the English language (1755); the period’s equivalent of a blog (The Rambler); the magnificent Preface to Shakespeare (whose works he edited); and brief biographies of most of the notable English poets up to his time (The Lives of the Poets). He was also a brilliant conversationalist, whose witty, insightful, and often snarky pronouncements were recorded by James Boswell in one of the greatest biographies in English, The Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1791). It was Johnson who said, “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates the mind wonderfully,” and “A second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.”

Humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson discusses Samuel Johnson’s life and achievements, looks at the London of his era, and offers a sampling of Johnson’s writings and passages from Boswell’s biography.

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