Biography of Samuel Johnson
- Samuel Johnson was born on 18th September 1709 in Lichfield, England.
- Michael Johnson was his father who was a bookseller.
- He was a biographer, essayist, lexicographer, editor, and poet.
- He was educated at Grammer School in Lichfield in 1719 and entered Pembroke College Oxford in 1728.
- When his father died in 1713, he was forced to leave the college.
- However, poverty did not stop him from securing respect and probity, he was received in the best society of his native place.
- He has strong and virtuous power of thinking. he was advancing slowly but surely into the higher society.
- Johnson never lost friends and respect and continues admired by each new friend.
- He married Elizabeth Porter (a widow) in 1735, older than him. At the time of marriage, he was twenty-six years old and his wife was forty-six years.
- His first literary attempt was the translation of "Father Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia".
- In 1737 Johnson come to London to try his fortune after an unsuccessful attempt of opening a school near Lichfield.
- When he was in London he write a historical tragedy named "Irene", an unsuccessful attempt.
- His expanded imitation of a juvenal satire "London" was his first work that bring public attention. It was published anonymously.
- "Vanity of Human Wishes" (1749 ) was an impressive poem, that has morality, the first work published with his name. It treats some melancholy subjects.
- In 1752 Johnson lost his wife.
- To pay his debt he published a work named "Rassela". It was written in solitude and sorrow which exhibits the author's temperament.
- His two political pamphlets are "The False Alarm" and "Falklands Islands".
- His most important work is "The Lives of the English Poets" in 1777.
- One of his pamphlets entitled "Taxation no Tyranny" is written in a strain of high Toryism.
source:-
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-Johnson
- https://biblioteca.org.ar/libros/167764.pdf