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)

9781108031745, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 June 2011

646 pages
21.6 x 14 x 3.6 cm, 0.81 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 4 contains the third 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 set a new standard for English literary biography. Although not all of the subjects have been regarded as eminent by posterity, the work was a great success. The volume also includes miscellaneous historical and literary biographies of figures such as Paolo Sarpi, Sir Francis Drake and Roger Ascham.

The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets concluded: Pope
Pitt
Thomson
Watts
A. Philips
West
Collins
Dyer
Shenstone
Young
Mallet
Akenside
Gray
Lyttelton
Miscellaneous Lives: Father Paul Sarpi
Boerhaave
Blake
Sir Francis Drake
Barretier
Morin
Burman
Sydenham
Sheynel
Cave
King of Prussia
Browne
Ascham.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]