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. Volume 2 contains the first part of the Lives of the Poets, his collection of short biographies and criticisms of over fifty literary figures.
This collected edition of Samuel Johnson's writings was published by his literary executor, the musicologist Sir John Hawkins, in 1787.