biographer of samuel johnson

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Samuel Johnson: A Biography By Peter Martin 2008 Softcover

Samuel Johnson, byname Dr. Johnson, (born September 18, 1709, Lichfield, Staffordshire, England—died December 13, 1784, London), English critic, biographer, essayist, poet, and lexicographer, regarded as one of the greatest figures of 18th-century life and letters.

Johnson once characterized literary biographies as “mournful narratives, ” and he believed that he lived “a life radically wretched.” Yet his career can be seen as a literary success story of the sickly boy from the Midlands who by talent, tenacity, and intelligence became the foremost literary figure and the most formidable conversationalist of his time. For future generations, Johnson was synonymous with the later 18th century in England. The disparity between his circumstances and achievement gives his life its especial interest.

Samuel Johnson was the son of Michael Johnson, a bookseller, and his wife, Sarah. From childhood he suffered from a number of physical afflictions. By his own account, he was born “almost dead, ” and he early contracted scrofula (tuberculosis of the lymphatic glands). Because of a popular belief that the sovereign’s touch was able to cure scrofula (which, for that reason, was also called the king’s evil), he was taken to London at the age of 30 months and touched by the queen, whose gold “touch piece” he kept about him for the rest of his life. This was succeeded by various medical treatments that left him with disfiguring scars on his face and neck. He was nearly blind in his left eye and suffered from highly noticeable tics that may have been indications of Tourette syndrome. Johnson was also strong, vigorous, and, after a fashion, athletic. He liked to ride, walk, and swim, even in later life. He was tall and became huge. A few accounts bear witness to his physical strength—as well as his character—such as his hurling an insolent theatregoer together with his seat from the stage into the pit or his holding off would-be robbers until the arrival of the watch.

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From his earliest years Johnson was recognized not only for his remarkable intelligence but also for his pride and indolence. In 1717 he entered grammar school in Lichfield. The master of the school, John Hunter, was a learned though brutal man who “never taught a boy in his life—he whipped and they learned.” This regime instilled such terror in the young boy that even years later the resemblance of the poet Anna Seward to her grandfather Hunter caused him to tremble. At school he made two lifelong friends: Edmund Hector, later a surgeon, and John Taylor, future prebendary of Westminster and justice of the peace for Ashbourne. In 1726 Johnson visited his cousin, the urbane Reverend Cornelius Ford in Stourbridge, Worcestershire, who may have provided a model for him, though it was Ford’s conviviality and scholarship rather than his dissipation (he is thought to be one of those depicted carousing in William Hogarth’s

In 1728 Johnson entered Pembroke College, Oxford. He stayed only 13 months, until December 1729, because he lacked the funds to continue. Yet it proved an important year. While an undergraduate, Johnson, who claimed to have been irreligious in adolescence, read a new book, William Law’s

, which led him to make concern for his soul the polestar of his life. Despite the poverty and pride that caused him to leave, he retained great affection for Oxford. He would later say with reference to the poets of his college, “We were a nest of singing birds.” In 1731, the year of his father’s death, his first publication, a translation of Alexander Pope’s “Messiah” into Latin, appeared in

Samuel Johnson (1709

, along with the poetry of other Oxford students. Pope was the leading poet of the age, and throughout most of his lifetime Johnson would comment on Pope’s achievement in various writings.

In the following year Johnson became undermaster at Market Bosworth grammar school, a position made untenable by the overbearing and boorish Sir Wolstan Dixie, who controlled appointments. With only £20 inheritance from his father, Johnson left his position with the feeling that he was escaping prison. After failing in his quest for another teaching position, he joined his friend Hector in Birmingham. In 1732 or 1733 he published some essays in

, none of which have survived. Dictating to Hector, he translated into English Joachim Le Grand’s translation of the Portuguese Jesuit Jerome Lobo’s

Samuel Johnson (september 18, 1709

, an account of a Jesuit missionary expedition. Published in 1735, this work shows signs of the mature Johnson, such as his praise of Lobo, in the preface, for not attempting to present marvels: “He meets with no basilisks that destroy with their eyes, his crocodiles devour their prey without tears, and his cataracts fall from the rock without deafening the neighbouring inhabitants.”

In 1735 Johnson married Elizabeth Porter, a widow 20 years his senior. Convinced that his parents’ marital unhappiness was caused by his mother’s want of learning, he would not follow their example, choosing instead a woman whom he found both attractive and intelligent. His wife’s marriage settlement enabled him to open a school in Edial, near Lichfield, the following year. One of his students, David Garrick, would become the greatest English actor of the age and a lifelong friend, though their friendship was not without its strains. It was with Garrick that some of the unflattering accounts of Johnson’s wife originated, and his mimicry of the couple later became a favourite comic setpiece of his. While at Edial, Johnson began his historical tragedy

, which dramatizes the love of Sultan Mahomet (Mehmed II) for the lovely Irene, a Christian slave captured in Constantinople. The school soon proved a failure, and he and Garrick left for London in 1737.This article is about the book writt by James Boswell. For the work writt by John Hawkins, see Life of Samuel Johnson (Hawkins book).

Boswell, James (1740–1795), Lawyer, Diarist, And Biographer Of Samuel Johnson

The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791) by James Boswell is a biography of glish writer Dr. Samuel Johnson. The work was from the beginning a critical and popular success, and represts a landmark in the developmt of the modern gre of biography. It is notable for its extsive reports of Johnson's conversation. Many have called it the greatest biography writt in glish, but some modern critics object that the work cannot be considered a proper biography. Boswell's personal acquaintance with his subject began in 1763, wh Johnson was 54 years old, and Boswell covered the tirety of Johnson's life by means of additional research. The biography takes many critical liberties with Johnson's life, as Boswell makes various changes to Johnson's quotations and ev csors many commts. Nonetheless, the book is valued as both an important source of information on Johnson and his times, as well as an important work of literature.

On 16 May 1763, as a 22-year-old Scot visiting London, Boswell first met Johnson in the book shop of Johnson's frid Tom Davies.

They quickly became frids, although for many years they met only wh Boswell visited London in the intervals of his law practice in Scotland.

Samuel Johnson Quote: The Business Of The Biographer Is Often To Pass Slightly

This journal, wh published in the 20th ctury, filled eighte volumes, and it was on this large collection of detailed notes that Boswell would base his works on Johnson's life.

Johnson, in commting on Boswell's excessive note-taking, playfully wrote to Hester Thrale, "One would think the man had be hired to spy upon me".

On 6 August 1773, elev years after first meeting Boswell, Johnson set out to visit his frid in Scotland, to begin "a journey to the western islands of Scotland", as Johnson's 1775 account of their travels would put it.

Biography Of The English Writer Samuel Johnson

Boswell's account, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1786), published after Johnson's death, was a trial of Boswell's biographical method before commcing his Life of Johnson.

With the success of the Journal, Boswell started working on the "vast treasure of his conversations at differt times" that he recorded in his journals.

Because Johnson was 53 wh Boswell first met him, the last 20 years of Johnson's life occupy four fifths of the book.

Samuel Johnson Biography

Furthermore, as literary critic Donald Gree has pointed out, Boswell could have spt no more than 250 days with Johnson and, therefore, had to have drawn the rest of the material for the Life either from Johnson himself or from secondary sources recounting various incidts.

Before Boswell could publish his Life of

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