The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Together with his Life, and Notes on his Lives of the Poets

This collected edition of Samuel Johnson's writings was published by his literary executor, the musicologist Sir John Hawkins, in 1787.

Samuel Johnson (Author), John Hawkins (Edited by)

9781108031738, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 June 2011

428 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.4 cm, 0.54 kg

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, edited by his literary executor, the musicologist Sir John Hawkins. Volume 3 contains the second part of his Lives of the Poets, his last major work. This was a commission to provide short accounts of over fifty poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it set a new standard for English literary biography. Although not all of the subjects have been regarded as eminent by posterity, and Johnson was criticised for brusque treatment of well-connected courtier poets now largely forgotten, the work was a great success.

The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, continued: King
Sprat
Halifax
Parnell
Garth
Rowe
Addison
Hughes
Sheffield
Buckinghamshire
Prior
Congreve
Blackmore
Fenton
Gay
Granville
Yalden
Tickell
Hammond
Somervile
Savage
Swift
Broome.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]