RARE 1850S SCOTLAND DR. JOHNSON ILLUSTRATED TRAVEL GIFT

 Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 [O.S. 7 September] – 13 December 1784), often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a devout Anglican and political conservative, and has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is also the subject of "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature": James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.

ON AUCTION HERE is a handsomely bound Scottish work, The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Comprising the Lives of the English Poets, Rasselas, Lives of Eminent Persons, and a Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. With an introductory essay by Arthur Murphy. With portraits (fine prints). Published at Edinburgh, Scotland, by W.P. Nimmo, with no date, but we would say 1850s to 1860s. 608 pages, 10x6 inches. Double column format, which is how they got all this material into one normal sized book. Bound in brown cloth at the spine and patterned red cloth at the boards, gilt titles. Someone has removed a signature on the ffep.

Johnson was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, and attended Pembroke College, Oxford for a year, before his lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as a teacher he moved to London, where he began to write essays for The Gentleman's Magazine. His early works include the biography The Life of Richard Savage, the poems London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, and the play Irene.

After nine years of work, Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755; it had a far-reaching impact on Modern English and has been described as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship". The Dictionary brought Johnson popularity and success. Until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary, 150 years later, Johnson's was viewed as the pre-eminent British dictionary. His later works included essays, an influential annotated edition of William Shakespeare's plays, and the widely read novel Rasselas. In 1763, he befriended James Boswell, with whom he later travelled to Scotland; Johnson described their travels in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Towards the end of his life, he produced the massive and influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, a collection of biographies and evaluations of 17th- and 18th-century poets.