Cloth binding. Black lettering with gilt title on front cover.

Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779–81), alternatively known by the shorter title Lives of the Poets, is a work by Samuel Johnson comprising short biographies and critical appraisals of 52 poets, most of whom lived during the eighteenth century. These were arranged, approximately, by date of death. From the close of the 18th century, expanded editions and updates of Johnson’s work began to appear.

Although the quality of Johnson’s writing has guaranteed the survival of his last considerable undertaking, its critical limitations generated published responses almost immediately. One of Johnson’s own friends, John Scott, so differed in opinion with some of his judgments that he wrote essays of his own on individual works by John Denham, John Dyer, Milton, Pope, Collins, Goldsmith and Thomson which were published in 1785 under the title Critical Essays on Some of the Poems of Several English Poets. When dealing with Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village he takes particular issue with the principles of inclusion in the collection of poets with which Johnson was associated: “The Temple of Fame, lately erected under the title of The Works of the English Poets, affords a striking instance of caprice in the matter of admission to literary honours”, he charged. To Scott the choice of poets seemed lacking in either method or “rational impartial criticism” (p.247).

In the same year appeared the new edition of Poems by the Most Eminent Ladies of Great Britain and Ireland…with considerable alterations, additions and improvements. It has been conjectured, as mentioned above, that a reissue of the work thirty years after its first publication was a response to the omission of any female poets from the recent collection. The 1785 editor does not say as much in the “Advertisement” and it is only by a comparison of the contents lists of the two that it becomes apparent that the new edition gives a less comprehensive choice of works in order to include more authors. Breadth of coverage in the 1785 edition demonstrates the variety of women poets rather than, as in the 1755 edition, the variety of writing by individual authors.

Between 1821 and 1824 Henry Francis Cary published several essays in The London Magazine, collected and posthumously published in 1846 under the title Lives of English poets, from Johnson to Kirke White, designed as a continuation of Johnson’s Lives. These were unaccompanied by the works of the seventeen poets covered, apart from excerpts quoted in discussing their writing. The essays follow Johnson’s tripartite exposition of biographical detail, character study and descriptive survey of the poetry, and begin with Johnson himself, at ninety pages in length by far the longest essay in the book. There his prose works as well as his poetry are discussed; in fact, more pages are devoted to the Lives of the Poets than to Johnson’s own performance as a poet. Oliver Goldsmith appears midway through the book and is given only twenty-four pages, less than those awarded William Mason and Erasmus Darwin, who precede and follow him. Where it is pertinent, Johnson’s critical opinions are quoted (although not always approved), and in Goldsmith’s case Johnsonian anecdotes are introduced.

Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 [OS 7 September] – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. He was a devout Anglican, and a committed Tory. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls him “arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history”. James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson was selected by Walter Jackson Bate as “the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature”.

Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, he attended Pembroke College, Oxford until lack of funds forced him to leave. After work as a teacher, he moved to London and began writing for The Gentleman’s Magazine. Early works include Life of Mr Richard Savage, the poems London and The Vanity of Human Wishes and the play Irene. After nine years’ effort, Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language appeared in 1755 with far-reaching effects on Modern English, acclaimed as “one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship”. Until the arrival of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years later, Johnson’s was pre-eminent. Later work included essays, an annotated The Plays of William Shakespeare and The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. In 1763 he befriended James Boswell, with whom he travelled to Scotland, as Johnson described in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Near the end of his life came a massive, influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets of 17th and 18th centuries.

Tall and robust, his gestures and tics disconcerted some on meeting him. Boswell’s Life along with other biographies, documented Johnson’s behaviour in a detail that allows a posthumous diagnosis of Tourette syndrome, a condition then undefined. After several illnesses, he died on the evening of 13 December 1784 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Thereafter he was increasingly seen to have had a lasting effect on literary criticism and even claimed to be the one truly great critic of English literature.