Yalden, Isaac Watts, Richard Blackmore’s The Creation and James Thomson’s The Seasons. But as the work progressed, many of the prefaces grew in length, further holding up progress. The format of these now included a narrative of the poet’s life, a summary of his character and a critical assessment of his main poems. Eventually the decision was taken in 1779 to issue 56 volumes of poets alone, for which the sheets were already printed, together with separate volumes of prefaces as and when Johnson completed them. At first the prefaces were only made available to subscribers to the full set of poets, but in March 1781 the collected prefaces were offered separately as a six-volume work under the present title. The Lives and their shortcomings With some rare exceptions, almost all the prefaces were specially written for the series. The extended Life of Richard Savage of 1744 was incorporated with very few changes; an article on the Earl of Roscommon, previously published in The Gentleman's Magazine for May 1748, was worked over to conform to Johnson’s overall plan. An earlier “Dissertation on Pope’s Epitaphs” from 1756 was added to the end of the life of Alexander Pope and the character of William Collins had already appeared in The Poetical Calendar (1763). The life of Edward Young was written by Sir Herbert Croft at Johnson's request, since that baronet had known him well. There are also lengthy quotations from other authors, as for example the “Prefatory Discourse” to the work of John Philips written by his friend Edmund Smith. Even though the choice of authors was limited to those who were dead, some among the most recently deceased were not included, notably Charles Churchill (of whom Johnson disapproved) and Oliver Goldsmith, but this may have been due to copyright issues in both cases. Women poets were comprehensively omitted and that fact too was to draw criticism. Indeed, it has been conjectured that the 1785 new edition of George Colman and Bonnell Thornton’s 2-volume Poems by Eminent Ladies (originally published in 1755) may have been meant as a conscious supplement to the all-male series. Not all the details in the book have proved trustworthy, and many critical judgements were considered prejudiced and unequal, even at the time of publication. The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature instances as examples "its strictures on Milton's Lycidas, Gray's Odes, and its evident prejudice against Swift",