Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), often referred to as “Dr. Johnson,” was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. The subject of perhaps the most famous biography in English, Johnson’s life and sayings were chronicled in James Boswell’s massive “The Life of Samuel Johnson.” Johnson also penned one of the first English dictionaries, as well as a series of biographies of numerous British poets (The Lives of the Poets) and two collections of essays (The Idler, The Rambler).