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On the 18th of September 1709, Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield. Michael, Samuel's father was a bookseller who came from a poor background; his mother Sarah was the daughter of a wealthy landowner. Samuel attended both Lichfield and Stourbridge Grammar schools, continuing his education at Pembroke college, Oxford, until factors of depression and financial difficulties forced him to leave without a degree. He had unsuccessful attempts finding school-teaching posts, other than a brief period at Market Bosworth Grammar School. Settling in Birmingham he began a literary career as a journalist and a translator. It was in Birmingham he met his wife to be, Elizabeth Porter. They married in Derby 1735. They made attempts to run a school at Edial Hall, Burntwood, though without success and in 1737 Samuel left the area with his pupil, David Garrick, to pursue his literary career in London. The next thirty-two years Samuel supported himself and his wife through his writing, journalism and parliamentary debates for the Gentlemans Magazine, translation, biography, poetry and various scholarly projects. His reputation as a scholar and a critic, in 1745, led to the offer of writing an English Dictionary. It took almost ten years work to complete the task of writing the dictionary. For much of this time Samuel and his wife lived and worked in their new home, at Gough Square near Fleet Street. It was between the years of the dictionary being written that his marriage had started to deteriorate and his wife spent much of her time in the north of the city. It was during that period that Samuel wrote his greatest poem, The Vanity of Human Wishes and his Rambler essays. David Garrick, once taught by Samuel, at this point an actor-manager produced Samuel's only play, 'Irene'. The appearance of the Dictionary in 1755 made Samuel extremely famous, however, not wealthy. After this, Samuel injected himself into another project, an edition of Shakespeare's plays. It was thought to be the death of his wife, just before the publication of the dictionary, that led him to take up such a long term project. His mother also died and to pay the funeral expenses he wrote a short novel called Rasselas. After working hard, in 1762 a government pension of £300 was introduced, which meant that Samuel no longer had to write to be able to live. Samuel Johnson at this point was one of the most famous men in England, due to the writing of the dictionary, the Ramblers and Rasselas. His friends included Samuel Richardson, Oliver Goldsmith and Fanny Burney, he also met the son of an Edinburgh High Court judge and Ayrshire landowner, James Boswell, also Henry Thrale and his wife, Hester. It was at the Thrales home in Southwark and Streatham that Samuel spent his last domestic years. In the 1770s Johnson started to write again: a series of political pamphlets on contempary issues, revisions to the Dictionary and his Shakespeare edition, and his account of a Scottish tour made in 1773 with James Boswell. Toward the end of his life, Samuel was unhappy, he was scared at the thought of his afterlife and at the same time the separation from friends and every day pleasures. Some three years after the death of Henry Thrale in 1781, his widow married Gabriel Piozzi, an Italian music master. Samuel was extremely hurt by her actions which led to a sad end to their friendship, making his final days unpleasant. Samuel was buried in Westminster Abbey one of the famous men of his day. His achievements were commemorated by many writers. James Boswell produced his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, which was his own account of his tour to Scotland, and seven years after his death, his Life of Johnson. Even after parting on bad terms Hester Piozzi brought out a study in her anecdotes of Samuel Johnson. The biographies by the late Samuel's friends showed how much he was admired for all of his qualities. http://www.lichfield-tourist.co.uk/history-johnson.ihtml |