title: The Lives of the Poets: A Selection (Oxford World's Classics)
author: Samuel Johnson
description: `Review from previous edition 'Although it is hard to find words of sufficient praise for it, this is a great and classic edition' ' Henry Woudhuysen, The New Rambler<br /><br />`'my book of the decade' ' Brian Vickers, TLS<br /><br />`'a marvelous scholarly performance' ' Frank Kermode, New York Review of Books
zlib_text: oxford world’s classics
  THE LIVES OF THE POETS
  Samuel Johnson was born in 1709 in Lichﬁeld, Staﬀordshire. The
  son of an impecunious bookseller, he experienced poverty through-
  out the ﬁrst part of his life, and, in spite of his formidable mental
  endowments, was able to attend Pembroke College, Oxford, for only
  a year. After moving to London in 1737, he earned his living by
  miscellaneous journalism for many years, until his Rambler essays
  and the ﬁrst historical dictionary of the English language brought
  him fame. A government pension of £300 a year relieved him from
  necessity, and in the later part of his life he came to be regarded as
  the greatest literary ﬁgure of his time in England. Among his most
  noted works are his poem ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes’, his
  periodical essays, his moral tale Rasselas, his edition of Shakespeare’s
  plays, and The Lives of the Poets. He died in 1784 and was buried in
  Westminster Abbey.
  Roger Lonsdale, formerly Professor of English Literature at the
  Unive