The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. : Together with his Life, and Notes on his Lives of the Poets (The Works of Samuel Johnson, Ll.d. 11 Volume Set)

Dr Samuel Johnson (1709–84) is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of English literature, as a poet, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. This collected edition of his works - commissioned by the publisher within hours of Johnson's death, such was his celebrity - was published in 1787 in eleven volumes, edited by his literary executor, the musicologist Sir John Hawkins. Volume 4 contains the third part of his Lives of the Poets, his last major work. This was a commission to provide short accounts of over fifty poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and set a new standard for English literary biography. Although not all of the subjects have been regarded as eminent by posterity, the work was a great success. The volume also includes miscellaneous historical and literary biographies of figures such as Paolo Sarpi, Sir Francis Drake and Roger Ascham.