Publisher's Synopsis
Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-84) is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of English literature, as a poet, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. This collected edition of his works - commissioned by the publisher within hours of Johnson's death, such was his celebrity - was published in 1787 in eleven volumes by his literary executor, Sir John Hawkins, the musicologist. The volumes contain a range of material, from Hawkins' biography of Johnson, to poems, a play, famous essay collections such as The Rambler and The Idler, A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland and philological items concerning the Dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare. The many biographies produced before and after his death have ensured Johnson's reputation, but even without these his own writings remain a landmark in eighteenth-century English literature.
