18 September: Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson, famous for his dictionary, was born in 1709 on this date. Here are some things you might not know about him.

1. He's most famous for writing a dictionary which was published in 1755, and which some people believe was the first English dictionary. It wasn't, however. There had been others before, such as Nathan Bailey’s Dictionarium Britanicum, which had been published in 1730, which Johnson used as a reference work.
2. He was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire to Sarah, who was 40 years old. At the time, this was considered unusually old. There were concerns about his health from the start because he didn't cry for some time. As a child, he contracted scrofula which left him with scars, deaf in one ear and blind in one eye.
3. As a young man he suffered from depression and developed tics, leading modern doctors to believe he might have had Tourtettes' Syndrome.
4. He studied at Pembroke College in Oxford, but had to leave after about a year because he couldn't afford to pay the fees. He tried to get a job as a teacher, but was turned down because of his facial tics – the school authorities were afraid he'd scare the children. Johnson started his own school, but only had three pupils. One of them was David Garrick, who would later become a famous actor.
5. He didn't just write a dictionary. He was a journalist, a biographer, a poet, a novelist and a playwright. His first published work was a poem called London in 1738. He used a little bit of marketing trickery – he deliberately misspelled the publisher's name so people would think it had been pirated, and would assume that therefore, it must be popular. His famous quote about London (“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life”) came from a discussion with a friend rather than from the poem.
6. He married the widow of his friend, Harry Porter, whose name was Elizabeth, or “Tetty”. This didn't go down well with her family as she was 46 at the time with three children and Johnson was only 25. She died in 1752. Johnson was so grief-stricken that it affected his work. He continued to write laments for her death in his diary until he died himself.
7. After his wife died, he took on a servant, a freed slave called Francis Barber, who stayed with him for over 30 years and became his heir.
8. It took Johnson nine years to complete the dictionary. In it, his political views and sense of humour shone through. His definition of lexicographer was “a writer of Dictionaries; a harmless drudge,” and Excise is defined as “A hateful tax levied upon commodities.” He didn't, however, know of any words beginning with the letter X. Under X, he wrote, “X is a letter which, though found in Saxon words, begins no word in the English language."
9. What was he like? He was tall 180 cm (5 feet 11 inches) tall when the average height of an Englishman was 165 cm (5 feet 5 inches), and robust. He was a religious man, a conservative Anglican, and politically, a staunch Tory. He would take in friends who were down on their luck, even when he was in dire financial straits himself, and he also loved Cats. He had two, named Hodge and Lily. He also enjoyed his food and drink. He is said to have drunk up to 25 cups of Tea in one sitting, and may have been an alcoholic. He also collected Orange peel, but refused to ever tell his biographer why he did so.
10. He died in 1784 at the age of 75. His last words were “I who am about to die.” He is buried in Westminster Abbey.

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