Johnson Cherian.
With Google’s doodle tribute to Samuel Johnson on what would have been his 308th birthday, the evolution of the modern dictionary comes full circle. For many these days, search engines are the first point of reference when encountering complexities of the linguistic kind.
Samuel Johnson, who is credited with compiling one of the first comprehensive dictionaries in the English language, was born in Staffordshire on September 18, 1709, to a bookseller. He spent his formative years at Lichfield Grammar School, and was briefly enrolled at Oxford, but was forced to abandon his academic hopes as his family fell upon dire financial circumstances.
Unable to find teaching jobs due to his status as an autodidact, Johnson drifted towards writing. In 1735, he married Elizabeth Powter, a widow 20 years his senior, and subsequently moved to London with aspirations of making his name as a journalist.
He gradually acquired a favourable reputation in literary circles, and in 1747, was commissioned to compile a dictionary by a syndicate of printers. The ‘Dictionary of the English Language,’ his magnum opus, took eight years to complete, and the involved the labour of six assistants, who worked out of Johnson’s Fleet Street house in London.
The dictionary was published in 1755, and despite not being the first of its kind, garnered praise for the exhaustive manner in which it created a compendium of all words spoken in the English language. Five other editions were printed in his lifetime.
The book held its pride of place among scholars till the publication of the Oxford English dictionary 150 years later, far outliving its creator. The first edition of the dictionary was said to be 18 inches tall.
In a country that was on the cusp of industrialisation, and where imperialistic aspirations were on the rise, Johnson was ahead of the times. He bequeathed his literary estate to Francis Barber, a Jamaican slave who served in his household for over 30 years, even after the passing of his wife.
Despite the success of his lexicon, Johnson lived in penury for much of his life, and his finances improved only after he was awarded a government pension in 1762. A biography published by James Boswell in 1763, revived interest in the man who made concerted efforts at documenting the vagaries of the English tongue, at a time when literacy rates in Britain were picking up.
Johnson died in 1784, and was laid to rest at Westminister Abbey, in the hallowed company of Sir Issac Newton, Geoffrey Chaucer, and other British luminaries.
