One of the most celebrated individuals of English literature, Samuel Johnson (1709 84) was a defining figure of his age. In addition to his celebrated labours as a lexicographer, Johnson distinguished himself as a poet, essayist, critic, biographer and editor. The writer and society hostess Hester Lynch Piozzi (1741 1821) was an unconventional woman of great intellectual vivacity. She became a close friend of Johnson, whom she met through her first husband, the brewer Henry Thrale, whose ailing business Johnson did much to support. As well as writing essays, poetry, memoirs and travel...

Originally published in 1921 as part of the Cambridge Plain Texts series, this volume contains fifteen papers by Samuel Johnson taken from The Idler, a series of 103 essays largely written by Johnson and published in London weekly The Universal Chronicle between 1758 and 1760. A short editorial introduction is also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the works of Johnson.

"I mentioned our design to Voltaire," wrote Boswell. "He looked at me as if I had talked of going to the North Pole ..."

As it turned out, Johnson enjoyed their Scottish journey (although the land was not quite so wild and barbaric as perhaps he had hoped), and Boswell delighted in it. The year was 1773, they were sixty-three and thirty-two years old, and had been friends for ten years. Their journals, published together here, perfectly complement each other. Johnson's majestic prose and hawk eye for curious detail take in everything from the stone arrowheads found in the Hebrides,...

Here is a substantial selection of Samuel Johnson's magisterial and unforgettable portraits of the lives of the English poets of the 17th and 18th centuries. Originally covering the lives of 52 poets, with the primary focus on Milton, Dryden, Swift, and Pope, Johnson's Lives was described by Thomas Gray as a "compendious story of a whole important age in English literature, told by a great man, and in a performance which is itself a piece of English literature of the first class." Unsentimental, opinionated, and quotable, The Lives of the Poets continues to influence the reputations of the...

Rasselas and his companions escape the pleasures of the "happy valley" in order to make their "choice of life." By witnessing the misfortunes and miseries of others they come to understand the nature of happiness, and value it more highly. Their travels and enquiries raise important practical and philosophical questions concerning many aspects of the human condition, including the business of a poet, the stability of reason, the immortality of the soul, and how to find contentment. Johnson's adaptation of the popular oriental tale displays his usual wit and perceptiveness; skeptical and...

Samuel Johnson's literary reputation rests on such a varied output that he defies easy description: poet, critic, lexicographer, travel writer, essayist, editor, and, thanks to his good friend Boswell, the subject of one of the most famous English biographies.

This volume celebrates Johnson's astonishing talent by selecting widely across the full range of his work. It includes "London" and "The Vanity of Human Wishes" among other poems, and many of his essays for the Rambler and Idler. The prefaces to his edition of Shakespeare and his famous Dictionary, together with...