Samuel Johnson
The ‘‘Great Cham (Sovereign or Monarch) of Literature”
#onhisbirthdaytoday
18th September 2025
A Man! A Plan! A Lexicon!
An exceptional and multifaceted writer!
A poet, lexicographer, translator, journalist, essayist, travel writer, biographer, editor, and critic!
One of the pioneering lexicographers!
Meet Samuel Johnson on his birthday today, ladies and gentlemen.
Gale’s Encyclopedia describes him as –
Perhaps the best-known and most often-quoted English writer after William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson ranks as England’s major literary figure of the second half of the eighteenth century.
He is remembered as a witty conversationalist who dominated the literary scene of London and the man immortalized by James Boswell in The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791).
He was known in his day as the ‘‘Great Cham (sovereign or monarch) of Literature,” and the the entry adds to say –
Johnson - poet, dramatist, journalist, satirist, biographer, essayist, lexicographer, editor, translator, critic, parliamentary reporter, political writer, story writer, sermon writer, travel writer, social anthropologist, prose stylist, conversationalist, Christian - dominates the eighteenth century English literary scene as his contemporary, the equally versatile and prolific Voltaire, dominates that of France.
When Johnson’s name began to be known, not long after the deaths of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, no challenger arose during the next forty years for the title of preeminent English man of letters. His work encompassed many ideas and themes, including the choice of life.
Well, his landmark achievement is his monumental work, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755). It was the first English dictionary to clearly aspire to literary distinction and to use quotations from other authors to illustrate word usage.
He is also known for his lasting contributions to literary criticism, particularly with his Lives of the Poets series. He believed that the best poetry used contemporary language and disliked archaic or decorative language.
On an aside, on his fascination for books, again from Gale’s Encyclopedia -
Johnson was the son of Michael Johnson, a bookseller, and his wife, Sarah Ford. The family lived above the bookstore, and Johnson literally grew up among books. He loved to read from an early age and often neglected to help with the shop so he could read.
Thus, Johnson grew up with an access to books greater than nearly anyone else at his time in Great Britain, as there were no public libraries in the modern, open, free sense of the word, and book collecting was the milieu of the wealthy.
A Man! A Plan! A Lexicon - Samuel Johnson! ❤️
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