Samuel
Johnson was born in Lichfield in 1709 to a middle-class family. His father was a bookseller.
From an early age, Johnson showed precocious or advanced intelligence, excelling at school. He
was able to attend Pembroke College in Oxford, but the family finances were so shaky (his
father's business was failing) that Johnson was forced to leave college for lack of
funds.
Johnson was forced to earn his own living but was hampered in getting
a steady and well-paying job as a schoolteacher because of a facial tic (which might have been
due to Tourette's syndrome) and his lack of a university degree. He therefore moved to London
with his student David Garrick, who became one of the most famous Shakespearean actors of all
time. Johnson himself became one of the most prominent literary figures of the eighteenth
century, as an essayist, critic, biographer, and author of A Dictionary of the
English Language.
Johnson was also famous for his salon, which
attracted many of the most important literary lights of the era. Johnson's many witticisms and
highly opinionated comments at his salon made him a talked-about celebrity figure in London
literary circles.
Johnson appreciated the measured, balanced Augustan prose
and steady moralism of the eighteenth century, and he left a very strong imprint on his
era.
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