Samuel Johnson





Samuel Johnson

Author profile


born
in Lichfield, Staffordshire, England, The United Kingdom
September 18, 1709

died
December 13, 1784

gender
male

website

genre


About this author

Samuel Johnson was an English author. Beginning as a Grub Street journalist, he made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is also the subject of one of the most celebrated biographies in English, James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. Boswell's Life, along with other biographies, documented Johnson's behaviour and mannerisms in such detail that they have informed the posthumous diagnosis of Tourette syndrome (TS), a condition unknown to 18th-century physicians. He presented a tall and robust figure, but his odd gestures and tics were conf...more


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More books by Samuel Johnson…
“Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.”
Samuel Johnson, Works of Samuel Johnson

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”
Samuel Johnson

“What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.”
Samuel Johnson, Johnsonian Miscellanies - Vol II