A label often applied to the last half of the 18th century, the Age of Johnson takes its name from Samuel Johnson, lexicographer, critic, scholar, poet, and novelist most well known for his DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1755). With little etymological background on which to draw, Johnson included definitions of more than 40,000 entries, relying on his voracious reading habits to help elucidate meanings.

His essays on varied topics for The Rambler, The Adventurer, The GENTLEMAN’S MAGAZINE, and his The Idler series published in the Universal Chronicle made famous his attitudes defending reason. He also believed in the value of research into all subjects, once commenting, according to Leslie Stephen, father of Virginia Woolf, “Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we inquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it.”

His critique of literature helped build a tradition of greater use of reality reflected in a series of 18th- and 19th-century novels by Tobias Smollett, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and many others. While not a philosopher or a producer of original theory, he doggedly promoted the detrimental effects of idleness and offered a wide-ranging assessment of human behavior.

His staunch attacks against poverty and suffering among the lower classes encouraged authors to use that and other socially conscious themes in their fiction, defying the early-18th-century “patina” of correctness with which many Augustan authors coated their writings. Johnson’s literary criticism represented some of the earliest praise of honesty and originality in fiction that might lead to the discovery of general truths about human nature.

His reputation for personal integrity helped legitimate the novel form when he published his only novel, RASSELAS, in 1759. Smollett referred to Johnson as The Great Cham, an archaic term meaning king, or leader. The “title” symbolized Johnson’s position as an arbiter of artistic taste and criticism in support of morality and ethics within the arts.

The Age of Johnson connotes not so much the period in which Johnson lived, but instead his own defense of the use of logic and rational expression against the incorporation of overt sentimentality and uncontrolled imagination in writing. He voiced his belief in the responsibility of a writer to make a fair and balanced presentation to the reading audience and practiced that belief in his own writing.

While some 19th-century critics considered Johnson merely an Augustan reactionary, his ideas excused by labels such as “eccentric” and “odd,” he emerged over time as one of England’s most celebrated thinkers and critics. The humanist values on which he based his commentaries would soon appear within much of British fiction.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lipking, Lawrence I. Samuel Johnson: The Life of an Author. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Stephen, Leslie. Samuel Johnson. New York: Macmillan, 1900.

Waingrow, Marshall, ed. James Boswell’s Life of Johnson: An Edition of the Original Manuscript in Four Volumes. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994.