Preface to Shakespeare's Plays

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) was an English writer, critic, and lexicographer whose intellect and personality dominated the literary culture of his age. Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, to a bookseller father, he struggled with poverty and depression for much of his life. His monumental Dictionary of the English Language (1755), compiled almost single-handedly over nine years, set a new standard for lexicography. The philosophical tale Rasselas (1759), written in a single week to pay for his mother's funeral, became one of the most reprinted works of the century. Johnson's Lives of the Poets (1779–81) established the model for modern literary biography. His conversational brilliance was immortalised by James Boswell in what many consider the greatest biography in English. A moralist, a wit, and a deeply compassionate man, Johnson shaped how the English-speaking world thinks about language, literature, and the examined life.