Lexicographer, critic, and poet, born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, C England, UK. The son of a bookseller, he studied at Lichfield and Oxford, but left before taking a degree, and became a teacher. In 1737 he went to London, and worked as a journalist. From 1747 he worked for eight years on his Dictionary of the English Language, started the moralistic periodical, The Rambler (1750), and wrote his prose tale of Abyssinia, Rasselas (1759). In 1762 he was given a crown pension, which enabled him to figure as arbiter of letters and social personality, notably in the Literary Club, of which he was a founder member (1764). In 1765 he produced his edition of Shakespeare, from 1772 engaged in political pamphleteering, in 1773 went with Boswell on a tour of Scotland, and later wrote Lives of the Poets (1779--81). His reputation as a man and conversationalist outweighs his literary reputation, and for the picture of Johnson in society we are indebted above all to Boswell.