In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reads Dr Johnson’s witty and penetrating critical biographies of the great and good By 1779, Samuel Johnson had attained that title by which he would become familiarly known: ‘Dr Johnson’. He wasn’t ‘doctored’ when he completed his most defining […]
The most significant events in the history of books on the 13th of December 1784: Samuel Johnson dies. Among the books he planned to write, but died before he got a chance to undertake them, Dr Johnson listed a cookbook set out ‘upon philosophical principles’ and a history of his melancholy. […]
The life of Dr Johnson, told through five pieces of biographical trivia 1. Samuel Johnson was known to drink up to 25 cups of tea in one sitting. Johnson (1709-84) took his eating and drinking seriously, as his prodigious tea habit testifies. According to his first – and still most […]