18 September 1709: Samuel Johnson is born

Samuel Johnson, commonly known as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls him “arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history”. Today, he is best remembered for his magnum opus, A Dictionary of the English Language.

Born on 18 September 1709 in Lichfield, Staffordshire, UK, to Michael Johnson, a bookseller and his wife, Sarah, Samuel Johnson owed much of his education to the fact that he grew up in a book shop.

Although he lived to old age, he was plagued by illness throughout his life. He was afflicted with scrofula, smallpox, partial deafness and blindness. One of his first memories was of being taken to London, where he was touched by Queen Anne. At that time, the touch of the sovereign was thought to be a cure for scrofula.

Johnson displayed signs of great intelligence as a child. His education began at the age of three when his mother had him memorise passages from the Book of Common Prayer. Aged 19, he went to Oxford but completed only one year until lack of money forced him to leave without a degree, a source of unhappiness for the rest of his life. To earn an income, Johnson began to stitch books for his father, and it is likely that he spent much time in his father’s bookshop reading and building his literary knowledge.

When he was 26, he married Elizabeth Porter, a widow twenty-five years his senior. Though Johnson’s references to his “Tetty” were affectionate, the 17 years of their childless marriage were sometimes strained.

In 1746, Johnson agreed to tackle one of the major projects of his career: A Dictionary of the English Language which took nearly a decade to complete. Published in 1755, it brought him great acclaim as “one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship”. From then on Johnson’s fame was assured and he was known as ‘Dictionary Johnson’, although he still suffered some financial difficulty. Until the arrival of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years later, Johnson’s was pre-eminent.

After several illnesses, Dr Samuel Johnson died in December 1784 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.