Johnson's Dictionary by Samuel Johnson

Johnson's Dictionary by Samuel Johnson

First published in 1755, Samuel Johnson's work provides not only a dictionary, but a mirror of 17th- and 18th-century life. This modern selection includes 5000 of Johnson's definitions.

Samuel Johnson was born in 1709 above his father's bookshop in Lichfield, England. He was a sickly child, scarred by smallpox, with facial and vocal tics, likely symptoms of Tourette Syndrome. But he proved a brilliant student, attending Oxford until a lack of funds forced his departure. (Numerous honorary degrees would later justify his famous sobriquet Dr. Johnson.) At twenty-five he married Elizabeth Tetty Potter, a well-off widow twenty-one years his senior. She funded a school Johnson started, but lost much of her wealth when the school failed. Wracked by guilt, Johnson walked to London and, living virtually on the street, began writing reviews, essays and news for magazines, notably The Idler and The Rambler. In 1744, he published his masterpiece, Life Of Savage, an innovative warts-and-all biography of his friend, writer Richard Savage. Johnson would write several more lives, culminating in his acclaimed three-volume Lives of The Poets. In 1746 a group of publishers asked Johnson to compile an authoritative English dictionary. He completed the massive undertaking in 1755, and A Dictionary of the English Language would set the standard for the next 150 years. Upon his death in 1784 he was buried in Westminster Abbey. Yet his fame only rose when, in 1791, his friend James Boswell published became the most famous life of them all: Life of Samuel Johnson.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780304347056
ISBN 10	0304347051
Title	Johnson's Dictionary
Author	Samuel Johnson
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Orion Publishing Co
Year published	1995-09-28
Number of pages	480
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable