Samuel Johnson (English critic)

Samuel Johnson (English critic)
Name	Samuel Johnson
Caption	Portrait by Joshua Reynolds
Birth date	18 September 1709
Birth place	Lichfield
Death date	13 December 1784
Death place	London
Occupation	Writer, Lexicographer, Critic
Notable works	A Dictionary of the English Language, Lives of the Poets

Samuel Johnson (English critic) was an English writer, lexicographer, and literary critic whose authoritative voice shaped eighteenth-century English literature and the development of the modern novel, poetry, and drama. Best known for A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) and The Lives of the Poets (1779–1781), he influenced contemporaries such as Oliver Goldsmith, James Boswell, Edmund Burke, and David Garrick, and later figures including William Hazlitt, John Keats, Thomas Carlyle, and George Eliot. His combination of learned scholarship and moral judgment placed him at the center of literary and social debates in London, Yorkshire, and beyond.

Early life and education

Born in Lichfield in 1709 to Michael Johnson and Sarah Ford, Johnson attended the Lichfield Grammar School and was apprenticed to a bookseller in Stourbridge before matriculating at Pembroke College, Oxford in 1728. Financial constraints and his father's death forced him to leave Oxford in 1731 without a degree, but his classical training in Latin, Greek, and the study of English literature—including works by William Shakespeare, John Milton, Alexander Pope, and Geoffrey Chaucer—informed his later criticism. Early employment included positions in Lichfield and London, where he established connections with figures in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and the coffeehouse culture of Fleet Street and Grub Street.

Literary career and major works

Johnson's early publications included essays and poems such as London (1738), which drew on models by Alexander Pope and artistic debates surrounding neoclassicism and sentimental literature. Moving to London, he composed the dramatic tragedy Irene and worked with The Gentleman's Magazine and patrons like Edward Cave. The commission to compile A Dictionary of the English Language (completed 1755) followed engagements with Ralph Allen and the Lord Chesterfield affair; the dictionary combined quotations from canonical authors—John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, Thomas Gray, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding—to illustrate usage. Johnson also published the periodical The Rambler (1750–1752), the moral essays of which placed him in conversation with Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, and the essay tradition of the Spectator.

In the 1760s and 1770s Johnson produced The Lives of the Poets (biographies and criticism of figures such as John Milton, Thomas Gray, John Dryden, Ben Jonson, William Cowper, Thomas Parnell), and revised editions of his dictionary. His critical writings addressed the novel through assessments of Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding, and he engaged in public quarrels with dramatists and critics associated with the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and the Covent Garden Theatre. Johnson's occasional verse—The Vanity of Human Wishes—responded to Horace and the Augustan tradition exemplified by Alexander Pope and John Dryden.

Critical style and influence

Johnson's critical method married philological precision with moral and philosophical judgment, drawing on the classical canon of Aristotle, the ethical inquiries of Montaigne, and the rhetorical practice represented by Quintilian. His reviews and essays balanced close reading of texts by William Shakespeare, John Milton, Alexander Pope, and Ben Jonson with broad reflections on taste, manners, and human nature that informed debates in The Spectator-inspired periodicals. Critics such as Hazlitt and Coleridge later debated Johnson's prescriptivism versus descriptivism, while admirers like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Carlyle credited him with shaping standards for literary judgment.

Johnson's influence extended to the practice of biography and literary history through Lives of the Poets, which combined archival research with anecdote—a mode later emulated by James Boswell in his Life of Samuel Johnson. His dictionary set a precedent for lexicography followed by Noah Webster and James Murray, and his prefaces and essays informed critical discourse in The Rambler, The Idler, and contemporary periodicals. Johnson's public presence in London coffeehouses, salons such as Hogarth's circle, and friendships with actors like David Garrick amplified his cultural authority.

Personal life and beliefs

Johnson's personal life intertwined with his intellectual pursuits: his marriage to Elizabeth Porter, his relationships with friends including Edmund Burke, Joshua Reynolds, Charles Burney, and his patronage ties to figures like Lord Chesterfield. He suffered from chronic health problems, including mental health struggles and possibly Tourette syndrome as posited by later scholars, which affected his social interactions and literary production. Religious conviction as an Anglican shaped his moral writings; he engaged with theological controversies concerning Deism, critiqued figures such as David Hume and commented on public matters involving William Pitt the Elder and the American colonies.

Later years and legacy

In his later years Johnson became a central figure in London's literary culture, frequently visited by admirers and critics, and celebrated in portraits by Joshua Reynolds and caricatures by James Gillray. His death in 1784 prompted national mourning observed in periodicals like The Gentleman's Magazine and retrospectives by contemporaries including James Boswell and Edmund Burke. Posthumously his reputation was cemented by Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), which shaped Johnsonian scholarship and inspired Romantic critics such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Johnson's lexicographical and critical standards influenced later institutions including the Oxford English Dictionary project and the practice of modern literary criticism at universities such as Oxford and Cambridge. His works remain central to studies of Eighteenth Century literature and the history of English language scholarship.

Category:English literary critics Category:18th-century English writers Category:Samuel Johnson