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- The poor son of a bookseller, Samuel Johnson becomes the leading literary figure of his generation. He wins renown for his witty conversation and vigorous, combative intellect—traits that his younger friend James Boswell depicts in vivid, dramatic, often humorous detail.
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The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791) by James Boswell is a biography of English writer and literary critic Samuel Johnson. The work was from the beginning a universal critical and popular success, and represents a landmark in the development of the modern genre of biography.
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., generally regarded as the greatest of English biographies, written by James Boswell and published in two volumes in 1791. Boswell, a 22-year-old lawyer from Scotland, first met the 53-year-old Samuel Johnson in 1763, and they were friends for the 21 remaining.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (/ ˈ b ɒ z w ɛ l,-w əl /; 29 October 1740 [1] – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of the English writer Samuel Johnson, Life of Samuel Johnson, which is commonly said to be the greatest biography written in the English ...
On the morning of August 6, 1763, at the English port of Harwich, a wandering navvy—what Americans would call a dockworker—might have glimpsed a sight passing strange and strangely beautiful. Making their way across the pebble-strewn beach were two men who looked like the original “Odd Couple.”
- Events in History at The Time of The Biography
- The Biography in Focus
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Whigs and Tories, Hanoverians and Jacobites
Samuel Johnson was born during the reign of England’s last Stuart monarch, Queen Anne (ruled 1702-14), the daughter of James II. A Catholic, James II had been overthrown in 1688, in favor of his elder daughter Mary, a Protestant, and her Dutch husband, Prince William of Orange. The pair ruled Britain jointly until Mary’s death in 1694. On William’s death in 1702, Mary’s younger sister Anne, also a Protestant, succeeded to the throne, but faced the threat of continuing attempts by her male Cat...
Old and Young Pretenders
The first Jacobite rebellion under the Hanoverians occurred in 1715, only a year after George I came to the throne. James II’s son, James Francis Edward Stuart (often called “the Old Pretender” or James III, though he was never crowned), landed with troops in Scotland in December of that year. Within a few months, however, he was forced to flee as the uprising collapsed. James’s son Charles Edward Stuart, called “the Young Pretender” or “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” revived the Jacobite cause with...
The Seven Years’ War
The Jacobite cause was only one factor in Britain’s long-running conflict with France, a struggle that was renewed in the middle of the eighteenth century after several decades of uneasy peace. Indeed, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s rebellion of 1745-46 (which included an abortive French invasion of England that ended when the French ships were wrecked in a storm) was only one campaign in a Europewide conflict, the War of Austrian Succession (1740-48). This war, in which France, Prussia, and Spain o...
Contents summary
Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, on September 18, 1709. His parents were not young when he was born and would have only one other child, Nathaniel, who died at age 24. Samuel’s father, Michael Johnson, was a marginally successful bookseller who owned a shop in Lichfield and also opened a stall in the nearby city of Birmingham every market day. It is widely believed that Johnson’s lifelong tendency toward depression, or “a vile melancholy” came from his father (Samuel Johns...
JOHNSON AND AMERICANS
Like many of his countrymen, Boswell sympathized with the American cause, but Johnson could be counted on to erupt into torrents of abuse when the subject arose in conversation: “Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for any thing we allow them short of hanging” (Samuel Johnson, p. 176); “I am willing to love all mankind, except an American” (Samuel Johnson, p. 247). His friend, however, failed to honor the promise to support him, and after three years Johnson was forced...
JOHNSON’S DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Johnson’s was the first English dictionary that attempted to be J comprehensive and precise in its definitions, while incorporating quotations from well-known authors to illustrate them. It was modeled on a French dictionary produced by the French Academy, which (Boswell relates) took its 40 members 40 years to finish. When Boswell asked how Johnson could intend to do it in three years, Johnson replied, “Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the...
Bate, W. Jackson. Samuel Johnson. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1977. Black, Jeremy. The Politics of Britain, 1688-1800. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993. _____. An Illustrated History of Eighteenth Century Britain, 1688-1793. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996. Bloom, Harold, ed. James Boswell’s Life of Samuel John...
His charm, sensitivity and intelligence opened doors to the most brilliant men of the day, but the ultimate prize for Boswell was his friendship with the towering figure of Dr Samuel Johnson – compiler of the definitive dictionary of the English language and celebrated man of letters.
May 16, 2013 · Samuel Johnson is remembered as the absolute epitome of the distinguished "man of letters". But the key to his continuing influence could have its roots in a meeting with a young Ayrshire lawyer...
