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Samuel Johnson (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

As befits the preeminent literary figure of his age, Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) has been the subject of many biographies, despite the fact that his works rank far below those of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and John Milton; the man is greater than the sum of his literary output. In SAMUEL JOHNSON: THE LIFE OF AN AUTHOR, Lawrence I. Lipking eschews the traditional approaches to biographical study, focusing instead upon the works as a means of revealing not just Johnson’s character and literary philosophy, but also his attitude toward the authorial profession and role of the writer in society. Lipking’s title words “Life of an Author” set forth the parameters of his study.

Lipking shows how Johnson’s theories of language as well as his identity and confidence as an author—the “I”—emerge in the years he worked as a lexicographer, producing what came to be known as “Johnson’s Dictionary” or A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1755). In Johnson’s THE PLAYS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1765), the preface and notes to the collected works place Johnson in the neoclassical tradition. He believes that Shakespeare’s works should be evaluated against “the general and collective ability of man,” not in comparison with his fellow English writers, and compares him to Homer as a poet whose abilities “transcend the common limits of human intelligence.” A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND (1775) is not a travel book, but an examination of what Johnson characterized as his “thoughts on national manners,” which he had been nurturing for years. His last important work, THE LIVES OF THE POETS (1781)—popularly known as “Johnson’s Lives”—was a ten volume accompaniment to a larger anthology of English poetry, which included his general introduction and “a concise account of the life of each author.”

SAMUEL JOHNSON: THE LIFE OF AN AUTHOR makes a convincing case for studying the works rather than biographical facts to shed light upon Johnson the writer, and Lipking amply demonstrates that this man—talented, ambitious, yet constantly struggling against depression and oppression—not only developed a singular identity, but also came to epitomize what it meant to be an author.

Sources for Further Study

Boston Globe. November 8, 1998, p. K1.

Buffalo News. November 22, 1998, p. G5.

First Things. January, 1999, p. 63.

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