16 Aug Dr Johnson

Dr Samuel Johnson is most famous for A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), containing over 40,000 words, which took him nine years to compile. It brought Johnson great popularity and success, but he was also a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic and biographer.

Dr Johnson was born in 1709 in Lichfield, a small west Midlands town, and the family home is now the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum, a marvelous tribute to his life and times. In the town’s Market Place there’s a splendid statue depicting Johnson in typical meditative pose.

In 1737 Johnson moved to London. Dr Johnson’s House – at 17 Gough Square – is an 18^th Century townhouse (now a delightful museum) set among a jumble of back streets in the ancient City of London. Johnson lived and worked there from 1748 to 1759. Close by – in a narrow alley off Fleet Street – is the historic pub Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, which was a regular haunt of literary figures, including Dr Johnson (and later Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). Johnson died in 1784 and is buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.