Johnson Samuel: biography, features of creativity, interesting facts

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:48

Samuel Johnson is an English critic, biographer, essayist, poet and lexicographer. Considered one of the greatest figures of life and literature of the 18th century. Another reason for the popularity that Samuel Johnson enjoys today is the writer's quotes.

Short biography

Johnson Samuel was born on September 18, 1709 in the provincial town of Lichfield, in the county of Staffordshire, in the family of Michael Johnson, who was engaged in the sale of books and stationery, and Sarah. The father (as well as later his son) was prone to bouts of melancholy, but he was respected: by the time Samuel was born, he had already served as a sheriff. Johnson Samuel was a sickly child and should not have survived. In 1711, at the age of two, he was almost blind, partially deaf, suffering from scrofula and tuberculosis, and was taken to Queen Anne, so that she would heal the patient with her touch. But miraculous healing, however, did not happen.

In 1716, sensitive, clumsy, and beyond his years, Johnson entered Lichfield Grammar School. It was led by the educated but cruel John Hunter, who beat his students in order, he said, to save them from the gallows. Later, Samuel insisted that if he had not been beaten, he would not have achieved anything. However, under Hunter's guidance, he learnedLatin and Greek and began to write poetry. In 1725, at the age of 16, the provincial Johnson stayed for six months with his cousin Cornelius Ford, a refined and dashing former teacher at Cambridge. There he first learned about the existence of the intellectual and literary world of the country.

Escape

In 1726 he left school and went to work in his father's bookshop. It was a mistake. Samuel Johnson's life was not happy for the next two years, but at the same time he continued to study English and classical literature avidly and unsystematically.

In 1728, with a small inheritance of forty pounds left to his mother after the death of a relative, he quite unexpectedly entered Pembroke College, Oxford. There, however, he could not provide himself with sufficient food, as, indeed, for many years to come. Here, signs of melancholy began to appear, which would haunt him for the rest of his life. As a consequence, he paid little attention to his studies and in 1789, extremely depressed and too poor to continue his education, he left Oxford without a diploma.

First books

Johnson's translation of Pope's Messiah from the Latin during his studies was published in 1731, but by then poor, in debt, depressed, partially blind and deaf, scarred from scrofula and smallpox, Samuel feared for his sanity. In addition, his father, also bankrupt, died in December of the same year.

In 1732, Johnson found work as a janitor at Market Bosworth High School. While visiting Birmingham he met Henry Porter and his wife Elizabeth. The following year, while lying in bed on yet another extended visit to new friends, Samuel dictated an abridged 17th-century French translation of A Voyage to Abyssinia. Portuguese Jesuit. It was his first published book, and Johnson received five guineas for it.

Marriage

In 1735, at the age of twenty-five, Johnson married the widowed 46-year-old Elizabeth Porter. With his wife's dowry of £700, Samuel founded a private academy near Lichfield. Among the students was David Garrick, who became the most famous actor of his time and a close friend of Johnson. By 1737, the academy was bankrupt, and Samuel decided to make a fortune in the literary field, leaving for London, accompanied by Garrick.

Creativity

In 1738, living in extreme poverty in London, Johnson began writing for Edward Cave's The Gentleman's Magazine. There he published London, an imitation of Juvenal's satire on the decline of ancient Rome, for which he received ten guineas. He also met Richard Savage, another impoverished poet of dubious reputation.

Between 1740 and 1743 he edited parliamentary debates for The Gentleman's Magazine. Years later, he was praised for his impartiality.

In 1744 RichardSavage died in a Bristol jail. Johnson wrote Savage's Life, remarkable for its honest depiction of the strengths and weaknesses of a friend's character. The work was the first prose of the writer to attract the attention of the reading public.

In 1745, “Various Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth” were published. The next year he signed a contract with a group of publishers and did a great job of compiling an English dictionary similar to that published in France by forty members of the French Academy. He turned with his "Dictionary Plan" to the Earl of Chesterfield, but he turned out to be a very mediocre patron. The consequence of this was Johnson's definition of the word "patron": "He is one who assists, helps and protects. It is usually a scoundrel who arrogantly supports in exchange for flattery.”

In 1748, with six assistants, Johnson moved into a large house in Fleet Street and began work on compiling a dictionary. In 1749, his melancholic The Vanity of Human Desires appeared, and Garrick staged Jonson's tragedy Irene in Drury Lane.

Between 1750 and 1752, he produced over two hundred Rambler essays in two weeks. In 1752 his wife died. Two years later Johnson returned to Oxford where he met Thomas Wharton, the future Poet Laureate. The following year, with the help of Wharton, Samuel finally received his master's degree from Oxford. In the same year his great English dictionary was finally completed and published, and although he was still very poor, his literary reputation was finally established. During this period hemet young Joshua Reynolds, Bennett Langton and Topham Beauclerk.

In 1756 Johnson Samuel wrote "Proposals for a New Edition of Shakespeare", which, however, did not appear until 1765. He also continued his activities as a journalist, editor and preface writer. When he was arrested for debt, bail was posted by Samuel Richardson. Between 1758 and 1760 he wrote a series of essays called "Lazy". In 1759, his mother Sarah died, and in a gloomy mood, he wrote the moral fable "Rasselas" to pay for what he said was a funeral.

Retired

In 1762, after the accession to the throne of George III, Samuel Johnson, whose books did not bring him much income, to his pleasure received a pension of 300 pounds a year. However, the appointment of the boarding house confused him even more, for he was an adherent of the Tory party and, mindful of the abuses of the Whigs, defined the word "pension" in his dictionary as "payment to public servants for betraying their country." For the first time in his life he was not forced to skimp on the essentials, and although his appearance remained surprisingly and inevitably uncouth, he became one of the most famous literary lions in high society. When several young ladies met him at a literary soiree and expressed surprise at the strangeness of his figure, as if he were some kind of monster from the deserts of Africa, Johnson remarked to them that he was tame and could be stroked.

In 1763 he first met James Boswell. Despite his Scottish origin (Johnsonabhorred the Scots - hence his famous definition: "Oats are the grain that in England is eaten by horses, and in Scotland by people"), they got along well with each other. In 1764 the "Literary Club" was formed, with Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Garrick, Boswell and Johnson as members.

Samuel in 1765, under his editorship, published the plays of Shakespeare with a magnificent and insightful preface, and received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Trinity College, Dublin. He also met the we althy Henry and Esther Trail, with whom he would spend most of his time for the next sixteen years (talking a lot, but doing little art). Johnson once remarked, “Only idiots write for nothing.”

In 1769 Boswell, having become a lawyer in Edinburgh, married, and remained in Scotland until 1772. Between 1770 and 1775 Johnson produced a series of vehement but characteristically definitive political pamphlets. In August 1773, though he had always despised Scotland, Samuel made a memorable trip with Boswell to the Hebrides. In July 1774 Johnson and the Trails went to Wales. In the same year, Oliver Goldsmith, one of the few contemporaries whom he sincerely admired, died, and the writer felt a huge loss.

Samuel Johnson on patriotism

Then he wrote the pamphlet "Patriot", where he criticized what he saw as false patriotism. On the evening of April 7, 1775, he famously said that patriotism is the last refugescoundrel. Contrary to popular belief, this was not referring to patriotism in general, but to the false use of the term by John Stewart, Earl of Bute, and his supporters and enemies, who played on his non-English origins. Johnson opposed self-proclaimed patriots in general, but valued "true" patriotism.

Atonement

In 1775 he published his Travel to the Western Isles of Scotland. In the same year, Johnson received an honorary degree from Oxford University and also visited France (which he found worse than Scotland) with the Trails. Samuel reacted violently to the American Revolution, characterizing the rebellious colonists as a "condemned race". In 1776, he traveled with Boswell to Oxford, Ashbourne, and Lichfield, where he stood bareheaded in the rain in the market square in front of his father's bookshop, atoning for "a breach of filial piety" committed 50 years earlier. Today it houses the Samuel Johnson Museum.

Last years of life

In 1778, he met 24-year-old Fanny Burney, who soon became a successful author of Evelina. The following year, David Garrick, an old student of Johnson and a close friend, died, and Samuel was shaken again. In 1781, after the publication of the Lives of the English Poets, Henry Trail died. Samuel comforted his widow and planned to marry her. In 1783, however, his he alth began to deteriorate and he suffered a stroke. The next year, after recovering somewhat, he broke with Mrs. Trail when she announced her intention to marry Gabriel Piozzi.

Dr. Samuel Johnson, suffering from gout, asthma, dropsy and swelling, found that the fear of death began to take possession of him, but met him courageously, as he met all the hardships in his life. On December 13, he died at the age of 75. Buried in Westminster Abbey on December 20.