"Samuel Johnson" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Samuel_Johnson_by_Joshua_Reynolds.jpg.
Samuel Johnson
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Standard Name: Johnson, Samuel
Used Form: Dr Johnson
Arriving in eighteenth-century London as one more young literary hopeful from the provinces,
achieved such a name for himself as an arbiter of poetry, of morality (through his Rambler and other periodical essays and his prose fiction Rasselas), of the language (the Dictionary), and of the literary canon (his edition of
and the Lives of the English Poets) that literary history has often typecast him as hidebound and authoritarian. This idea has been facilitated by his ill-mannered conversational dominance in his late years and by the portrait of him drawn by the hero-worshipping
. In fact he was remarkable for his era in seeing literature as a career open to the talented without regard to gender. From his early-established friendships with
and
to his mentorship of
,
, and (albeit less concentratedly) of
and
, it was seldom that he crossed the path of a woman writer without friendly and relatively egalitarian encouragement.
Timeline
Texts
Johnson, Samuel. A Dictionary of the English Language. Knapton, 1755.
Johnson, Samuel. A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1775.
Johnson, Samuel. A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Editor Lascelles, Mary Madge, Yale University Press; Oxford University Press, 1971.
Lobo, Jeronimo. A Voyage to Abyssinia. Translator Johnson, Samuel, A. Bettesworth and C. Hitch, 1735.
Johnson, Samuel. Diaries, Prayers, and Annals. Editors McAdam, Edward Lippincott, Jr et al., Yale Edition, Yale University Press and Oxford University Press, 1960.
Bate, Walter Jackson et al., editors. “Introduction”. The Rambler, Yale Edition, Yale University Press, 1969, p. xxi - xlii.
Bronson, Bertrand H., and Samuel Johnson. “Introduction”. Johnson on Shakespeare, edited by Arthur Sherbo and Arthur Sherbo, Yale Edition, Yale University Press, 1975, p. xiii - xxxviii.
Gold, Joel J., and Jeronimo Lobo. “Introduction”. A Voyage to Abyssinia, translated by. Samuel Johnson, The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, Yale University Press, 1985, p. xxiii - lviii.
Johnson, Samuel. “Introduction”. The Lives of the Poets, edited by Roger Lonsdale, Clarendon Press, 2006, pp. 1: 1 - 185.
Johnson, Samuel. Lives of the English Poets. Editor Hill, George Birkbeck, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1905, 3 vols.
Johnson, Samuel, and Arthur Waugh. Lives of the English Poets. Oxford University Press, 1973, 2 vols.
Johnson, Samuel. London. R. Dodsley, 1738.
Johnson, Samuel. Poems. Editors McAdam, Edward Lippincott, Jr and George Milne, The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, Yale University Press, 1964.
Johnson, Samuel. Political Writings. Editor Greene, Donald, Yale University Press, 1977.
Johnson, Samuel. Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets. 1st ed., C. Bathurst et al., 1781, 10 vols.
Johnson, Samuel. Samuel Johnson: A Critical Edition of the Major Works. Editor Greene, Donald, Oxford University Press, 1984.
Johnson, Samuel. Sermons. Editors Hagstrum, Jean and James Gray, The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, Yale University Press, 1978.
Johnson, Samuel. Sir Joshua’s Nephew. Editor Radcliffe, Susan M., John Murray, 1930.
Johnson, Samuel. The Complete English Poems. Editor Fleeman, John David, Penguin, 1971.
Johnson, Samuel. The Idler; and, The Adventurer. Editors Bate, Walter Jackson et al., Yale, Yale University Press, 1969.
Johnson, Samuel, and Hester Lynch Piozzi. The Letters of Samuel Johnson. Editor Chapman, Robert William, Clarendon Press, 1984, 3 vols.
Johnson, Samuel. The Letters of Samuel Johnson. Editor Redford, Bruce, The Hyde Edition, Princeton University Press, 1994, 5 vols.
Johnson, Samuel. The Life of Mr Richard Savage. Printed for J. Roberts, 1744.
Johnson, Samuel. The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets. C. Bathurst, J. Buckland, W. Strahan, et. al., 1781, 4 vols., http://SpCol PR 553 J67 1781.
Johnson, Samuel. The Lives of the Poets. Editor Lonsdale, Roger, Clarendon Press, 2006, 4 vols.