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Samuel Johnson, the great 18th century writer, thinker and author of the famous Dictionary had close connections with Birmingham and the West Midlands. His mother was born in Kings Norton and married Martin Johnson, a bookseller in Lichfield where Samuel Johnson was born in 1709 and brought up. He often visited his godfather, Dr Swyfen, in Birmingham, and came to live here himself from 1732 to 1735 at the house of his friend the bookseller Thomas Warren in High Street. During this time he met his future wife, Elizabeth Porter, and his first original essays appeared, in Warren’s Birmingham Journal. Johnson made a brief return to Lichfield in 1736 when he founded a school nearby. The future actor David Garrick was among his pupils, and remained a lifelong friend, but Johnson was not a successful schoolmaster, and, perhaps fortunately for his future literary career, the school failed.

While working on his famous Dictionary, Johnson produced The Vanity of Human Wishes, 1749, in imitation of the tenth satire of Juvenal, a work, which reflects in its despondency the considerable personal and financial difficulties under which Johnson was living at the time. This was the first work, which bore Johnson’s name on the title page. The work, which after the Dictionary consolidated Johnson’s reputation with his contemporaries, was his edition of Shakespeare. Johnson began work on this in 1756 but found it hard to sustain his interest. He worked on it intermittently until 1765 when his edition was finally published.

Category: People

Institute: Birmingham Libraries Central Library

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