Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Death: 13th December 1784
Location: Westminster Abbey, London, England
Photo taken by: David N. Lotz
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English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer.  
After nine years of work, Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755. It was not the first dictionary, nor was it unique, however, it was the most commonly used and imitated for the 150 years between its first publication and the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1928.  
In 1759 Johnson published his philosophical novella The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. Rasselas was written in one week to pay for his mother’s funeral; it became so popular that there was a new English edition of the work almost every year and it was immediately translated into French, Dutch, German, Russian and Italian.
In 1763, he befriended James Boswell, with whom he later traveled to Scotland; Johnson described their travels in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Johnson’s later works included essays and an influential annotated edition of William Shakespeare's plays. Towards the end of his life, he produced the massive and influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, a collection of biographies and evaluations of 17th- and 18th-century poets.
In 1791 James Boswell published The Life of Samuel Johnson. It is regarded as an important stage in the development of the modern genre of biography; many have claimed it as the greatest biography written in English.

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