Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson was born on 18 September 1709 in Lichfield, the son of the bookseller Michael Johnson, and suffered from scrofula and poor eyesight from infancy.

Johnson entered Pembroke College, Oxford in October 1728 but was forced to leave after about thirteen months when his funds ran out, never completing a degree.

On 9 July 1735 Johnson married Elizabeth Porter, a widow more than twenty years his senior, whose money helped him open a short-lived school at Edial.

In 1737 Johnson walked to London with his former pupil David Garrick to seek his fortune, beginning years of hack work for The Gentleman's Magazine.

Between 1750 and 1752 Johnson wrote the twice-weekly periodical The Rambler almost entirely by himself, establishing his reputation as a moral essayist.

Johnson's monumental Dictionary, prepared over nine years with only modest clerical help, was published on 15 April 1755 and remained the standard English dictionary until the Oxford English Dictionary.

In 1762 Johnson received an annual pension of 300 pounds from the crown, which freed him from financial hardship.

Johnson first met his future biographer James Boswell in a London bookshop on 16 May 1763, beginning one of the most famous friendships in literary history.

Johnson's last great work, the Lives of the Poets, a series of critical biographies of fifty-two poets, was published between 1779 and 1781.

Samuel Johnson died on 13 December 1784 at his house in London and was buried in Westminster Abbey.