Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is one of the pre-eminent figures of 18th-century English letters. A poet, essayist, critic, journalist and lexicographer, Johnson was formidably productive and wide-ranging. He was also a legendary wit and conversationalist, whose sharp-tongued pronouncements and many eccentricities are well recorded in Boswell's classic Life. In 1755, he published the first proper dictionary of the English language, defining some 40,000 words with great verve. (In it, he defined a lexicographer as a 'harmless drudge'.) His essays on Shakespeare, his Lives of the Poets and his extensive periodical essays were all seminal works in their field and his philosophical romance Rasselas (1759) is as pungent today as ever.
- ISBN10 1904341896
- ISBN13 9781904341895
- Publish Date November 2004 (first published 22 November 2004)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Haus Publishing
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 192
- Language English